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BJP sticks to old guard, Jitendra Singh, Jugal Kishore to contest LS poll from Udhampur, Jammu
On Saturday, the BJP released names 195 Lok Sabha candidates from 16 states and two Union Territories
The Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP’s) on Saturday released its first list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, sticking to its old guard in the Jammu region and announced Union minister Dr Jitendra Singh and sitting MP Jugal Kishore for Udhampur and Jammu parliamentary seats, respectively.
Both the leaders have been fielded for the third successive elections since 2014.
The saffron party released names 195 Lok Sabha candidates from 16 states and two Union Territories (UT).
The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has five Lok Sabha seats, three in Kashmir Valley and two in Jammu.
Jitendra Singh was re-elected to the Lok Sabha after defeating Vikramaditya Singh by approximately 3,50,000 votes in the 2019 general elections.
Singh got 7,15,406 votes, as against his rival’s 3,66,123. On May 31, 2019, it was announced that Singh had retained his ministries in the second ministry under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A diabetologist who completed his degree from Stanley Medical College in Chennai, Singh was the chief spokesperson of J&K unit of the BJP before being elected to the 16th Lok Sabha.
In 2014 general elections, Singh had defeated Congress candidate Ghulam Nabi Azad. Singh got 4,87,369 votes as compared to Azad’s 4,26,393 votes. He was dubbed as the “giant killer” in the political circle after the victory.
He shot to the limelight in 2008 over the Amarnath land row agitation that lasted 61 days at a time when the atmosphere became extremely polarised. During the turmoil, Singh, a good orator, emerged as a prominent voice of Jammu.
An author of eight books and a newspaper columnist, he often blamed the National Conference, the Peoples Democratic Party and the Congress for the “ills that plagued Jammu and Kashmir”.
After the terror attack in Pulwama, in which 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troops were killed, a war of words between National Conference president Omar Abdullah and Singh had erupted.
Singh had called politicians from Kashmir “apologists” and Abdullah reacted, saying that no one should play politics over dead and injured soldiers.
In 2019, sitting MP from Jammu constituency, Jugal Kishore Sharma, defeated Congress’ Raman Bhalla and in 2014, he had defeated Congress candidate Madan Lal Sharma.
A two-time MLA from Nagrota before becoming the president of J&K unit of the BJP in 2012, luck has smiled in abundance on Sharma over the years.
A Rashtriya Swamyamsewak Sangh (RSS) worker, the political graph of Sharma has been on an upward trend since he forayed into politics as a BJP leader.
Zafar Choudhary, a political analyst said, “In the first list of 195 candidates released by the BJP, the party has largely stuck to old guards. It seems they are so confident of their previous two terms that they want and believe in fighting a pro-incumbency election.”
