J&K polls: Congress’ Ghulam Ahmed Mir leads from South Kashmir’s Dooru segment

Congress general secretary and former minister Ghulam Ahmad Mir was leading from South Kashmir’s Dooru constituency in the assembly election, with results being announced on Tuesday, October 8.

Initial trends showed that the 64-year-old politician’s closest rival for the seat was Mir Mohammad Ashraf Malik of the Peoples Democratic Party, a retired district and sessions judge.

More details on Dooru
Dooru in Anantnag district was the first constituency in the Kashmir Valley to witness high-profile election campaigning, featuring prominent campaigners such as Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Kanhaiya Kumar, along with former Jammu and Kashmir chief ministers Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, all rallying for Mir.

In the last assembly election held in 2014, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Syed Farooq Ahmad Andrabi won the seat by a narrow margin of just 161 votes.

Mir, who has previously served as the Congress president in Jammu and Kashmir and as tourism minister, has held the position of MLA for Dooru in two consecutive terms, in 2002 and 2008.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections for South Kashmir’s Anantnag constituency, both Mir and Mehbooba Mufti were defeated by Hasnain Masoodi of the National Conference.

Rahul Gandhi launched the Congress election campaign in Kashmir from the Dooru constituency on September 4, which went to polls in the first phase along with 23 other constituencies in the South Kashmir and Jammu region on September 18.