Hazratbal Constituency: NC’s fortress with 9 victories in 52 years

Abid Ahmad

Srinagar, Sep 20: Hazratbal constituency is one among the eight assembly segments in Srinagar, where the people have favoured National Conference (NC) candidates majority of the times since 1962 as the party has retained the seat nine times and lost only two times till 2014.
About 1.12 lakh electorates are set to cast their ballots on September 25 in the second phase of the ongoing assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir which include 56175 male and 56366 female voters.
As per the details available with The Morning Kashmir, a total of 118 polling stations have been set up by the poll body for the constituency, which include 107 in urban areas and 11 in rural areas.
At least 13 candidates are in the electoral fray, who are vying for the seat while prominent among them are the NC candidate Salman Sagar and PDP’s Asiea Naqash.
Naqash has won the 2014 assembly polls from Hazratbal constituency by securing 13,234 votes, while her close rival, Mohammad Syed Akhoon of NC garnered 9,834 votes.
However, it would be interesting to see whether the NC would be able to defeat the former health minister and the PDP candidate from the seat and retain the segment once again after emerging victorious from at least nine times out of 11 elections since 1962.
In the seven consecutive elections upto 2009 since 1977, NC candidates always had an upper hand from the constituency; the party’s candidate faced a defeat in 2014 polls when there was PDP wave in the Valley.
The political analysts believe that it would be difficult to judge anything from the constituency as both the parties have a good vote share in Hazratbal constituency. “It would be interesting to see whether the NC will retain the seat once again or the PDP’s Naqash would have the public support for the second consecutive time,” they said.