Before i let Sajjad Lone do some plain talking ...... would like to make a point. He went into the elections with the platform that he is going to go to the parliament to carry the voice of "Kashmir" ...... is seems the people did not like the idea, so he lost ....
So your brilliant point is that the people of Kashmir don't like their "voices" being heard? Yes, clearly that's the best explanation for the defeat of a not particularly popular politician, in a state with a legendary history of electoral fraud.
Now what does he say about the elections ....
That would be a lot of "cousins" !!!!!!!
A lot of cousins indeed...if you actually bother looking at the detailed results for the local assembly elections, you'll see that few candidates won by anything approaching a majority mandate because the votes were so divided between 517 local "independent" candidates, and 43 "political parties." Throw in some draconian curfews and some forced voting out in the villages, plus some aggressive PR effort on the part of the GOI to show that local elections have nothing to do with the Kashmiri independence movement and the final settlement of the state's status (which, in typical two-faced Indian fashion, the GOI immediately reneged on as it declared the turnout a rejection of Kashmiri nationalism)...and you get 51% turnout.