Engineer Rashid's brother Khurshid Ahmad Sheikh wins Langate seat in J&K election 2024
Khurshid Ahmad Sheikh, a government teacher, resigned from his position in June, shortly after his brother defeated former Jammu and Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah.
Jammu and Kashmir election results 2024: Khurshid Ahmad Sheikh of the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) has won the Langate constituency by a slim margin of 1,602 votes.
According to data from the Election Commission of India, Sheikh garnered 25,984 votes, while his closest competitor, Irfan Sultan Pandithpuri of the People's Conference received 24,382 votes.
Sheikh initially trailed during the early stages of vote counting but eventually took the lead and secured the victory.
Langate has previously been represented by Sheikh's brother, Engineer Rashid, a Lok Sabha MP from Baramulla, who held the seat for two consecutive terms from 2008 to 2019.
Sheikh, a government teacher, resigned from his position in June, shortly after his brother defeated former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah and People’s Conference leader Sajad Lone in the Lok Sabha elections.
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This resignation allowed him to become the second member of his family to enter politics after Rashid.
Rashid’s sons, particularly his elder son Abrar Rashid, campaigned for Sheikh during the Lok Sabha elections but have not yet officially joined the political arena.
Sheikh faced tough competition from Irfan Panditpuri of the People’s Conference and Syed Ghulam Nabi of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The National Conference-Congress alliance nominated Ishfaq Ahmad for the seat, while Dr. Kaleemullah, the son of Jamaat-e-Islami leader Ghulam Qadir Lone, contested as an Independent. Lone is part of the Jamaat's eight-member leadership panel.
Langate was historically a National Conference (NC) stronghold, with the party winning it for four consecutive terms from 1977 to 1996.
In the 1999 by-elections, PDP candidate M/S Panditpuri, who had defected from the NC, won the seat, while the NC's Sharif-ud-din Shariq secured it in 2002.
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Rashid first won the assembly seat in the 2008 elections as an Independent and successfully retained it in 2014, defeating PDP’s Ghulam Nabi Ganai by a margin of 2,505 votes.
Langate constituency went to the polls in the third phase on October 1, along with the other constituencies of the UT including Samba and Sopore.
