Meet Baldev Kumar, 1st non-native to contest polls in J&K post Article 370 repeal

The Lok Sabha elections in J&K are being scheduled in five phases with voting in each of the five parliamentary constituencies.

Punjab resident Baldev Kumar, who filed his nomination from the Anantnag-Rajouri parliamentary constituency as an independent candidate, has become the first non-native person to contest the Lok Sabha election in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir after the abrogation of Article 370.

People stand in a queue to cast their votes at a polling station as voting starts in the first phase of India's general election at Udhampur district.(AFP)

Kumar, who hails from Punjab's Mohali, is among the 25 candidates in the fray from the constituency, which will go to polls on May 7. The 67-year-old candidate does not hold Jammu and Kashmir's domicile certificate as he had not stayed in one place in the erstwhile state.

Read here: Lok Sabha polls: Udhampur voters brave bad weather to post 65% turnout on seat

The candidate said that he decided to file after a "large" number of localites insisted that he "served for the last two decades" here, be it during the 2014 floods or sponsoring the education of Kashmiri students, reported news agency PTI.

"I worked for the people during the 2014 floods, I have sponsored the education of a number of students, I have facilitated patients from Kashmir when they go to Punjab for medical check-ups and kept a kothi (house) for them where they can stay when they go there for treatment," Kumar said to PTI.

The independent candidate from the constituency also pressed the demand for building a a 'Kashmir Bhawan' in Punjab, especially for the patients. "Social activist Medha Patkar got 20 acres of land for her NGO from the Gujarat government but I have not been allotted even two acres for a Kashmir Bhawan for the patients from J&K. The people have told me that I have to be in power and only then can I build a Kashmir Bhawan. So, I decided to contest the polls," he added.

Kumar is the first ‘outsider’ to contest polls after the abrogation of Article 370 and bifurcation of the erstwhile state in 2019. Though he is not the first-ever ‘outsider’ to contest the polls. In the 2019 general elections (before the scrapping of Article 370), NCR resident Shams Khwaja contested the election from the Anantnag constituency but lost.

Objections were raised against Khwaja's candidature but were overruled by the election authorities, thus becoming the first-ever non-resident to contest the polls in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Lok Sabha elections in the Union territory are being scheduled in five phases with voting in each of the five parliamentary constituencies of the union territory to be held in each phase. Approximately 65% of the total 16.23 lakh registered voters cast their ballot by 5 pm on Friday in the first phase of the elections in Udhampur.

(With inputs from PTI)