Is Khanyar A Cakewalk For Ali Mohammad Sagar ? (image: facebook.com/Ali Mohammad Sagar)
As the upcoming Jammu and Kashmir assembly election is significant on various grounds, it is also witnessing the rise of a new political generation in the poll fray. Interestingly, the National Conference (NC) has fielded a father-son duo in the electoral field – Ali Mohammad Sagar and Salman Sagar are the candidates. As Salman Sagar, the provincial youth president of NC, is facing his debut assembly polls from Hazratbal, Ali Mohammad Sagar is a long-time winner from the Khanyar constituency.
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Sagar, a seasoned politician and general secretary of the party, is seeking his fifth term from the Khanyar assembly seat. He has been winning the seat since 1996. In the 2008 polls, Sagar received 6314 votes. He had defeated PDP candidate Showkat Ahmad Hafiz by a margin of 5508 votes. In 2014, he defeated PDP’s Muhammad Khurshid Alam by a margin of 1167 votes.
Sagar has also served various ministerial roles within Omar Abdullah-led Jammu and Kashmir government. He has been serving as a general secretary of the party since 2014.
As he is vying for the fifth term, Sagar is pitted against PDP’s new face, Tafazul Mushtaq. Other candidates in the poll fray include Apni Party nominee Bilal Ahmad Mir, Sheikh Imran, a former Deputy Mayor of Srinagar who is contesting as an independent candidate, and five other independent candidates.
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According to political experts, the constituency has no significant candidates other than Sagar. Will this make a cakewalk for Sagar? Or will the new faces wrest the constituency from Sagar, whose previous victory was only by a margin of 1,167 votes? Besides, the results have to expect the repercussions of the 2022 delimitation exercise incurred on the constituency.
The Khanyar, along with 25 other constituencies, will go to the polls in the second phase on September 25.
