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BJP retains Udhampur seat

Professor Chaman Lal Gupta of the Bharatiya Janata Party retained the Udhampur Lok Sabha seat in Jammu and Kashmir, defeating the National Conference's Rajinder Singh Chib by 81,364 votes.

Prof Gupta, who took the lead right from the beginning, polled 250,813 votes against Chib's 169,499.

Thakur Randhir Singh of the Congress came third with 36,731 votes. Kalilulbah of the Bahujan Samaj Party polled 28,617 votes.

Once a bastion of the Congress and thrice represented by Dr Karan Singh (in 1971, 1977, 1988), the Udhampur constituency was wrested by the BJP in 1996 when Prof Gupta defeated Janak Raj Gupta.

Thirteen of the 15 candidates in the fray could not save their deposits.

Udhampur was originally scheduled to go to polls on March 7. However, bad weather had seen the date being postponed to March 18. But voting could not be held in eight polling stations of the Kishtwar assembly segment due to their inaccessibility. The polling in the remaining stations was held Wednesday last. The counting of votes started on Thursday.

Of the total 101.5 million electorate, 523,385 exercised their franchise. Returning officer S R Kapoor said 8,077 votes were found invalid.

UNI

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