Celebrations started outside the Congress head office in Delhi early Tuesday morning, much before the counting of votes began for state elections in Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana. The Bhupinder Hooda-led Congress is confident of returning to power in Haryana and expects an impressive show by the INDIA alliance in Jammu and Kashmir.

Congress supporters, holding flags, were seen dancing to the beats of dhol outside their Delhi office. Some burst firecrackers and some even blew conches to mark the beginning of counting of votes.

The early leads suggest the Congress is ahead in Haryana and the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir.

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In Haryana, former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda is trying to wrest control from the BJP after 10 years of ML Khattar and Nayab Singh Saini governments. His supporters in

“The BJP will go and Congress will come to power with over 75 (out of 90) seats. The BJP has always stayed away from truth and never fulfilled their promises,” said the supporters of Mr Hooda, who had gathered outside his house in Rohtak.

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They claim Mr Hooda is ahead in line to become Chief Minister again once the Congress returns to power.

The Congress went all out in its campaign in the state, attacking the BJP government over issues like unemployment, Agniveer scheme, and an alleged lack of development.

The party also did intense campaigning in Jammu and Kashmir with Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi addressing several rallies in the Union territory.

Counting for the 2024 Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election – the first since Article 370 was scrapped in August 2019 and the first since 2014 – began 8 am.

In early leads, the Congress-National Conference alliance has taken a commanding lead  in what was to supposed to be a tight race. At 9.10 am the Congress-NC is ahead in 48 seats and the BJP in 26.

Within the Congress-NC alliance the former party is leading in 12 of the 39 seats it is contesting, while the latter, which has fielded candidates for 56 seats, is ahead in 35.

The People’s Democratic Party of ex Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti – whose party allied with the BJP after the 2014 election but fell apart by 2018 – is leading in eight.

Independent candidates are in pole position in two seats.

The race to control the former state’s 95 Assembly seats – of which five have been nominated by Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha in a controversial move – is predicted to be a close one.

Exit polls have given the Congress-NC alliance a slight edge. An aggregate of three indicates the Congress-NC will win 43 seats and the BJP 26, with the PDP winning between four and 12.

Exit polls, therefore, predict a hung Assembly; the J&K Assembly has 90 elected seats with the majority set at 46. Should exit polls – and they often get it wrong – hold true, the PDP could be the ‘kingmaker’ for the Congress-NC, but not for the BJP, which will also need support from non-aligned lawmakers.

It is with this in mind that NC leaders Farooq Abdullah and his son, Omar Abdullah, and the Congress, as well as the PDP, have criticised the Lieutenant Governor’s move to nominate five members.

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“This is an assault on democracy… and fundamental principles of the Constitution,” senior J&K Congress Ravinder Sharma said. The NC and PDP slammed the “subversion of the people’s mandate”.

The power to nominate was granted after the Delimitation Commission increased the number of seats in J&K. The five will include two women, two Kashmiri Pandits, and a displaced person from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir – to the Legislative Assembly, increasing the total number of seats to 95. 

The PDP, at this time, has ruled out a re-run of its 2019 alliance with the BJP, insisting it will only consider a ‘secular alliance’. That, inevitably, sparked talk of aligning with the Congress-NC combine.

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Last night NC patriarch Farooq Abdullah said “why not” when asked about the PDP as an ally, although that party’s senior leader, Iltija Mufti, quickly called such speculation “unnecessary”.

Voting for this election took place over three phases – on September 18, September 25, and October 1.

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