Srinagar: The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has landed in a difficult spot in Jammu and Kashmir after a Right to Information (RTI) plea disclosed that it didn’t appoint authorised agents in the recent Rajya Sabha election. The issue has triggered accusations from the ruling National Conference and some opposition parties that the PDP betrayed secular forces and enabled the election of J&K BJP chief Sat Sharma to the Upper House of the parliament.NC supremo Farooq Abdullah, who had earlier thanked PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti for supporting his party’s candidates in the Rajya Sabha polls, withdrew his remarks, saying that he had no knowledge of whom the party’s three legislators voted for.“They didn’t vote for us. Ask them who they voted for. Now it is clear,” he said.J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah also alleged that the PDP helped the saffron party. “They won’t mend their ways. What we are suffering today is because they helped the BJP in settling here,” he said.However, the PDP has rejected these allegations, arguing that the NC’s candidate and spokesperson, Imran Nabi Dar, lost by 14 votes to Sharma which made their three legislators inconsequential for the outcome of the election.“After attending a meeting of the NC in which the chief minister was also present, Mehbooba ji announced that the party’s three legislators were going to vote for the third seat. We only followed what they asked us to do,” PDP leader Waheed Parra said.The political storm in the Union territory erupted in the backdrop of an RTI disclosure that the PDP had not appointed authorised agents for the 2025 Rajya Sabha elections in October last year which was marred by allegations of cross-voting, enabling the saffron party to win one out of four seats.As per rules, each political party can appoint at least two agents who are tasked to verify whom their respective MLAs vote for.According to the Central Public Information Officer of the J&K Assembly Secretariat, there were seven authorised agents in the Rajya Sabha election with four belonging to the NC followed by two from the BJP.The Congress which had not fielded any candidate in the election also had one agent for the election. Meanwhile, the PDP which was not in the race either had not appointed any agent.Independent candidates are not required to show their votes to anyone but those affiliated with political parties are bound by law to show their marked ballot papers to the authorised agents before placing them in the ballot box.The electoral arithmetic in J&K assembly favoured the ruling party on the day of the election.Together with its alliance partners, the party has 58 legislators in the house of 90 which made the election a mere formality.However, only 87 votes were cast.While Peoples Conference president Sajad Lone abstained from voting, Nagrota and Budgam assembly seats were vacant. The Aam Aadmi Party’s J&K president and Doda legislator Mehraj Malik cast his vote through postal ballot.When the results were declared, the BJP had defied the electoral arithmetic with its J&K president bagging 32 votes in the third round of election even though the party has only 28 legislators in the assembly.NC candidate Dar bagged only 21 votes in the third round of election, which indicated that some legislators had deliberately cross-voted or invalidated their votes to help the saffron party candidate.Besides the BJP’s Sharma, the NC’s Sajad Kichloo, Choudhary Mohammad Ramzan and Gurwinder Singh Oberoi were elected to the Rajya Sabha.The surprise outcome sparked allegations of horse trading, cross-voting and polling manipulation with Lone alleging that the surprise win was a “fixed match” between the NC and the BJP.Chief minister Abdullah, however, accused Lone of helping the BJP by abstaining from voting. After the results were declared, Abdullah said that his party was “betrayed at the 11th hour” and “almost everybody knows the names of those who betrayed us”.Asked for reaction to the chief minister’s allegation that the party did not appoint an authorised agent in the RS polls to help the BJP’s candidate, Parra countered by saying that the NC too had not appointed a whip and agent during the election of the vice-president of India.“Does that mean that the NC voted in favour of the BJP in that election? The fact of the matter is that this pointless controversy is an attempt to take away focus from more pressing issues facing Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.However, an NC leader said that the RS polls which are conducted through open ballot can’t be compared with the vice-president election which is a secret ballot, “Hence there is no need for the parties to issue whip. The BJP candidate was comfortably placed to win the VP polls,” he said.Since the founding of the PDP in 1999, the party has elected three leaders to the Rajya Sabha including Trilok Singh Bajwa in 2002 and Fayaz Ahmad Mir and Nazir Ahmad Laway in 2015.Interestingly, Mir abstained from voting on the The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2019 or ‘Triple Talaq’ Bill, sparking a political controversy.