The BJP’s goal of putting in place a Hindu chief minister in Jammu and Kashmir remains a pipe dream if the Lok Sabha elections in the Union Territory are seen as a trailer before the Assembly polls, with the party and its "allies" leading only in a third of the 90 Assembly constituencies.

INDIA bloc partners NC, Congress and PDP are leading in 46 seats, one more than the halfway mark. If the INDIA partners fight as an alliance and repeat the performance, they are likely to sail through.

Though the Centre has been dithering on holding the Assembly polls pending since 2018, the Supreme Court has directed the Election Commission to hold the elections before September 2024.

While INDIA partners are leading in most Assembly seats, the larger anti-BJP camp is firmly ahead in 60 or two-thirds of the seats in J&K.

Independent candidate Sheikh Abdul Rashid aka Engineer Rashid, who trounced former chief minister Omar Abdullah and Peoples Conference president Sajad Lone in Baramulla, is leading in the remaining 14 Assembly seats. Though Rashid is not part of either alliance, his ideology fits in the larger anti-BJP camp.

The BJP and NC have won two parliamentary seats each in Jammu and Kashmir, while the fifth has gone to the jailed leader. The statistics are bad news for the BJP, which has pulled all stops over the years to prepare the ground for a Hindu CM to take up the big job.

In 2020, the Centre unilaterally set up a delimitation commission to carve out new Assembly seats for J&K despite the erstwhile Assembly putting delimitation on hold till 2026. The Assembly had 87 seats — 46 in Kashmir, 37 in Jammu and four in Ladakh. The separation of Ladakh left the J&K Union Territory with 83 seats.

The commission increased the Jammu seats by six — from 37 to 43, while the Valley’s number rose by a seat to 47, seen as an apparent bid to bolster the BJP’s quest for a Hindu chief minister. The increase in Jammu seats happened despite the Valley having a share of 56.3 per cent in the UT population. The commission also clubbed seven Assembly segments in Rajouri and Poonch with the Anantnag Lok Sabha seat to bring "parity" between Jammu and Kashmir.

The worry for the BJP is that while it has done relatively well, its alleged proxies have failed miserably. The BJP is leading in 29 Assembly seats out of the 36 seats that form the Jammu and Udhampur LS seats. The party won both the seats.

The Apni Party was not leading in any of the 36 segments in the Srinagar and Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha seats. Lone, in the fray from Baramulla, secured a lead only in Handwara out of the 18 Assembly constituencies. Among the INDIA partners, the NC was leading in 34 seats, followed by the Congress and the PDP in seven and five seats, respectively.

BJP spokesman R.S. Pathania sounded confident that the BJP will form the next government in J&K. "We will improve our tally. Since we had not fielded candidates in the three LS seats (in Kashmir), things will be different in the Assembly. We will sweep the Pahari-dominated seats in Rajouri and Poonch and those in Kashmir," he said.