New Delhi: The Congress slammed the BJP for questioning its alliance with the National Conference ahead of the Union Territory Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections and said the saffron party was afraid of losing the contest. “The BJP also had an alliance with the PDP in the past, but it is now questioning our alliance with the National Conference. Actually, they are afraid of losing the Assembly elections and are therefore raising such non-issues,” AICC in-charge of Union Territory Jammu & Kashmir Bharat Sinh Solanki told ETV Bharat.
The alliance was sealed in principle during the visit of the Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, and Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge to the residence of National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah on June 22, but a seat-sharing formula between the two parties was still being negotiated.
Elections for the 90 Assembly seats in Union Territory Jammu & Kashmir will be held in three phases on September 18, 25 and October 1. The results will be out on October 4. According to party insiders, out of the 24 seats going to the polls in Phase 1, the Congress is keen to contest 9 or 10, including four seats in the Kashmir region considered to be a stronghold of the two regional parties NC and PDP.
Of the four seats, the Congress had won two Devsar and Shangas in 2014. In the third seat, Duru former J&K unit chief Ghulam Ahmed Mir had lost to PDP’s Syed Farooq Ahmed Andrabi by a narrow margin of just 161 votes. The fourth seat is Kokar Nag where PDP’s Abdul Rahim Lather had won in 2014, said party insiders.
“We are asking for seats that we had won and those where we were runners up,” a senior AICC functionary said. The challenge before the Congress managers is that the KokerNag seat has become a reserved seat following delimitation and the party will have to find a new suitable face there. Otherwise, senior leader Peerzada Mohammed Syed belongs to the area and would have been a natural choice, said party insiders.
Soon after returning from Jammu & Kashmir, Rahul and Kharge chaired the Central Election Committee meeting on August 23, which planned to announce the first list of around 10 names on Friday itself. However, the CEC could approve candidates only for five seats as a decision on the four seats in Kashmir could not be taken due to the held-up seat-sharing talks with the NC.
“We are a national party and have a claim on seats across both the regions of Jammu and Kashmir. The seat-sharing talks are going on and will be finalised soon,” said Solanki. According to party insiders, the last date of nomination for Phase 1 polls was August 29 and the party still had some time for it.
“Both the NC and PDP have been allies of the BJP in the past. The BJP-PDP government’s Common Minimum programme had talked about starting talks with the Hurriyat Conference. Why are they now targeting the regional parties,” said Solanki.
Both NC and PDP were part of the INDIA bloc at the national level, but only the Congress and NC had a pact for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The Congress had then charged the BJP with supporting the PDP from behind the scenes. The NC, too, is wary of the PDP.
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