New Delhi: Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge are moving fast on Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir and will oversee ticket distribution for the Union Territory in the meeting of the party’s Central Election Committee on August 23. According to party insiders around a dozen seats, which the Congress is certain to contest will be approved in the first CEC meeting, which will take place soon after the Screening Committee meeting on August 23.
For the remaining seats that will come in the grand old party’s quota based on a seat-sharing formula that is in the works with the potential allies, the Congress will clear the candidates over the coming days. Rahul and Kharge recently reviewed the J&K Screening Committee’s work and directed its members to focus on good candidates, who were committed to party ideology.
LoP Rahul Gandhi and Kharge, who are on a two-day trip to UT J&K, dropped sufficient hints on Thursday that the Congress wanted to take its INDIA bloc allies together to fight the BJP, but made it clear that there will be no compromise concerning the party workers.
According to party insiders, the visit of the top two leaders to the border region was to convey a message that the Congress was a dominant player in the UT and that it was the only party capable of taking on the BJP nationally be it the Lok Sabha polls or Assembly elections.
“The platform of the Congress is open to any party or person, who is willing to work, along with us in our fight against the BJP. We had said that before the Lok Sabha polls and are again saying that ahead of the Assembly elections in J&K. Only the Congress fights the BJP ideologically and Rahul Gandhi represents that fight,” AICC functionary and former J&K unit chief Ghulam Ahmed Mir told ETV Bharat.
According to party insiders, the Congress is willing to take both the regional parties National Conference and People’s Democratic Party along to forge a joint front against the BJP, but bringing together the two INDIA bloc allies in state politics was the real challenge.
The Congress had a pre-poll pact with the NC in the Lok Sabha elections under which both the parties contested three seats each out of the five parliamentary seats in UT J&K and the lone seat in UT Ladakh and it would be easy to work out a pact for the Assembly polls, but a section of the UT unit wants to go it alone, said party insiders.
According to party insiders, the Congress was keen to contest around 40 of the 90 Assembly seats, but the NC wanted to give only 30 seats, mostly in the Jammu region. Initially, NC leader and former chief minister Omar Abdullah had said he won’t contest the Assembly polls, but may now join the fight.
The Congress had been upbeat over the recent support it got in the UT and is expecting leaders from the Apni Party and Ghulam Nabi Azad’s DPAP to join it over the coming days. The erstwhile state was converted into two UTs in August 2019 when the Modi government removed Article 370 of the Constitution that gave Special Status to the border region.
