Srinagar:
The BJP today released a list of 82 candidates for the three-phase election to 90 Assembly seats in Jammu and Kashmir. This is the first Assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir after the erstwhile state lost its special status in 2019 and was bifurcated into two Union Territories. After the last Assembly election in 2014, BJP and PDP had tied up to form the government.
The list was released this morning after the BJP’s Central Election Committee finalised the party’s poll picks for the upcoming election. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP chief JP Nadda were at the key meeting in Delhi yesterday.
In the 2014 election, the BJP had put up a stellar show by winning 25 seats. The PDP had emerged as the single largest party with 28 wins. The incumbent National Conference won 15 seats and the Congress bagged 12. Following the election, the BJP and the PDP forged a surprise alliance government, led by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and then by Mehbooba Mufti after the former’s death in 2016.
This time, Jammu and Kashmir may be headed for a tripartite contest between the BJP, the PDP and the National Conference-Congress alliance. The Congress and National Conference, meanwhile, are yet to iron out differences in seat-sharing. Top Congress leaders KC Venugopal and Salman Khurshid have been rushed to Srinagar to clear the roadblocks in the negotiations between National Conference and the local Congress leadership.
Earlier, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi met National Conference president Farooq Abdullah and vice-president Omar Abdullah and announced their alliance.
Scoffing at the tie-up, BJP general secretary Tarun Chugh, who is in charge of the party’s Jammu and Kashmir campaign, said the Congress-National Conference alliance will collapse like a house of cards and will face a humiliating defeat.
In some of the key Kashmir seats, the BJP’s candidates are Er Syed Showkat Gayoor Andrabi (Pampre), Arshid Bhat (Rajpora), Javed Ahmad Qadri (Shopian) and Mohd Rafiq Wani (Anantnag West). Others include Syed Wazahat from Anantnag, Sofi Yousuf from Srigufwara-Bijbehara, Veer Saraf from Shangus-Anantnag East and Tariq Keen from Inderwal.
