As the contest for the lone Lok Sabha seat of Ladakh has turned triangular, top Buddhist leaders in Leh are trying hard to conciliate the BJP and Congress candidates to prevent the division of votes of the community.

Both the BJP candidate, Tashi Gyalson, and the Congress candidate, Tsering Namgyal, hail from the Buddhist community of Leh against whom the Shia Muslim community of Kargil district has fielded a single candidate, Haji Hanifa Jan, who belongs to the National Conference (NC). Defying the NC’s directive to withdraw from the election arena and leave the seat for the Congress to contest, Jan has filed his papers as an independent.

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There were reports that the President of the Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA), Chering Dorjey Lakrook, and a former MP and a highly respected Buddhist leader, Thuptsan Chhewang, are making efforts to prevent division of votes in their community but it has turned out to be a ticklish exercise.

A video of Chhewang has gone viral in Ladakh in which he is seen expressing concern over having only one Shia candidate from Kargil against two Buddhists from Leh. Once the seat goes out of the hands of Leh, it will be lost forever by us, he says.

There were reports that Chhewang has appealed to the LBA and all Gompas (monasteries) to work out some strategy to have only one Buddhist candidate to defeat the candidate from Kargil.

Electoral conflict erupted in Ladakh when the BJP denied ticket to its sitting MP Jamyang Namgyal and declared Gyalson, the chairman of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), as the party’s candidate. Jamyang initially announced that he would contest the election as an independent, but he’s now campaigning for the BJP’s official candidate.

Meanwhile, all parties in the Kargil district have united and announced Jan as their candidate. They have not paid any heed to the appeal of the NC chief Dr Farooq Abdullah to allow a direct contest between INDIA bloc candidate Tsering Namgyal and BJP’s Gyalson.

Jan continues to be in the field for the poll on 20 May and it has become the cause of concern for the Congress that was allocated the Ladakh seat for contest under the seat-sharing formula of the INDIA bloc. Other two Shia Muslim candidates of Kargil have already withdrawn their papers to support Jan. What was most worrying for the Congress leadership was that the party’s Kargil district leadership was also rallying behind Jan.

However, NC is being portrayed as the villain by the BJP whose national general secretary Tarun Chugh accused Dr Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah of having shown their true colours by “deceiving” the Congress in Ladakh and also PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti by denying her party even a single seat in J&K.

It is also being said that the situation in Ladakh was a retake of the 2009 Lok Sabha polls when the NC officially supported Congress candidate P Namgyal. However, behind the scenes, Ghulam Hassaan Khan, an independent candidate belonging to Kargil got elected due to the division of votes in Leh.