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Disquiet in BJP unit on J&K polls’ candidate list
The BJP on Monday issued and then quickly withdrew a list of 44 candidates for the J&K assembly elections amid rumblings of discontent.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday issued and then quickly withdrew a list of 44 candidates for the Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) assembly elections amid rumblings of discontent within the party over opportunities given to leaders with roots in other parties.
The party later announced 16 candidates only for the first phase of the elections on September 18, when 24 of the 90 seats in the Union territory will go to the polls, but not before workers protested at the party office in Jammu.
The rescinded list – which included eight candidates from Kashmir and 36 from Jammu – featured six leaders who were earlier in other parties.
Prominent among them were former ministers Choudhary Zulfikar, who quit the Apni Party to join the BJP, Syed Mushtaq Bukhari, a former National Conference (NC) leader, and former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) legislator Murtuza Khan.
In the rescinded list, Shyam Lal Shama, who defected from the Congress to the BJP, was given the ticket from Jammu West. Surjit Singh Salathia, a former NC leader, was named the candidate from Samba. Devender Singh Rana, who defected to BJP after quitting the NC in 2021, was fielded from Nagrota.
The new names – released in a batch of 15 candidates in one list, and then one more name in a second list – include eight from Jammu and eight from Kashmir. They include six leaders imported from other parties.
“The first list had to be withdrawn because it created a lot of furore among the party loyalists and senior leaders of the BJP. They sulked over the selection of political turncoats at the expense of loyal and time-tested party leaders,” said a BJP leader, requesting anonymity.
The first assembly elections in Jammu & Kashmir in a decade will be held in three phases on September 18 (24 seats) and 25 (26 seats), and October 1 (40 seats). This is also the first assembly polls in the restive region since its special status and statehood were scrapped five years ago and is likely to be the last step before the Union territory’s statehood is restored. The drama came on the final day of filing nominations for the first phase of polls.
Soon after the list of 44 names was released, protests began at BJP offices.
“I have been associated with the party for the last 18 years and have worked day and night to strengthen it but the mandate was given to a person who joined the party only a few days back,” said BJP Scheduled Caste Morcha president Jagdish Bhagat, talking about Akhnoor (SC) seat.
But local BJP unit chief Ravinder Raina played down the protests. “We work like a family and thousands of our workers are ready to make their contribution to the success of our candidates…Our mission is the victory of our party... there are many types of discussions and issues within a party,” he added.
The rescinded list had 10 nominees for the second phase and 19 for the third phase – these were removed eventually when the BJP finally announced its candidates for the first phase. No second and third phase candidates were eventually announced.
The BJP’s central election committee met on Sunday to finalise the candidates for the assembly polls. The party won 25 of the 87 seats when assembly elections were last held in J&K in 2014 and formed the government with the PDP, which bagged 28 seats. The NC got 15 seats while its ally Congress had 12.
The polls in J&K will be held months after the Union government in July widened the scope of J&K lieutenant governor’s powers from police and public order to postings and prosecution sanctions. Parties such as NC condemned the move, calling it the step to rendering the chief minister in J&K “powerless” and disempowering the region’s people.
J&K has been without an elected government since June 2018 when the BJP withdrew support to the PDP-led coalition government. The region was under the governor’s rule before the Union government in August 2019 revoked Article 370 of the Constitution, which gave the region semi-autonomous status, and bifurcated the erstwhile state into the Union territories of J&K with an assembly and Ladakh without one.
In December last year, the Supreme Court upheld the revocation of Article 370 and directed the Election Commission of India to conduct polls for the 90-member J&K assembly by September 30, 2024. The court asked the Union government to restore statehood to the region “as soon as possible”.
In May 2022, a three-member delimitation commission redrew the electoral map of J&K, earmarking 43 seats to the Hindu-majority Jammu region and 47 to Muslim-majority Kashmir. Out of the seven new seats, six were allotted to Jammu and one to Kashmir. The regional parties rejected the panel’s decision, calling it an attempt to consolidate the BJP’s vote bank.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, defence minister Rajnath Singh, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and BJP president JP Nadda will be among the party’s star campaigners for the elections.
Those prominent in the new list are engineer Syed Showkat Gayoor Andrabi from Pampore, Arshid Bhat from Rajpora and Javed Ahmed Qadri from Shopian.
On being named as a candidate from Kishtwar assembly constituency, Shagun Parihar said: “I am very grateful for this opportunity… I am confident that the people of Kishtwar will accept this daughter of Kishtwar with an open heart. The BJP is a big party which takes care of all its members like their own.”
