New Delhi: The Congress hopes to ally with regional parties PDP and NC in Jammu and Kashmir to defeat the BJP in the coming Lok Sabha polls, a senior AICC functionary said on Monday.
“The Congress screening committee for Lok Sabha polls will meet the local leaders in Jammu on February 2. The Congress national alliance committee will hold seat-sharing talks with allies PDP and NC after that. Both are part of the INDIA alliance which will sweep the J&K polls,” AICC general secretary in charge of Jammu and Kashmir Bharatsinh Solanki told ETV Bharat.
According to Congress insiders, back-channel talks with the leaders of both PDP and NC have been encouraging and the seat-sharing will be finalized soon after the formal meeting. “Solanki has personally met PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti and will soon meet NC leader Omar Abdullah after he returns from pilgrimage,” a senior AICC functionary said.
Before the erstwhile state of J&K was divided into two UTs Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh in August 2019, following the removal of Article 370, the total number of Lok Sabha seats in the unified state was six. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP and the NC had won three seats each.
Solanki refused to comment on the number of seats the Congress may get in the alliance but party insiders said the grand old party could get two or three seats out of the total five seats in J&K and the Ladakh seat. “Though the outcome of the seat-sharing talks will be known after the formal meeting of allies, we are preparing the ground on all the seats including in Ladakh,” he said.
As part of the drive, the Congress is trying to revive itself in the two UTs. “I recently spent five days travelling across the UTs. We are trying to revive the party at the booth level. We are going to hold conventions of state and block level leaders after the screening committee meeting on February 2,” said Solanki.
The Congress and the NC alliance won 22 out of the total 26 seats in the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (Kargil) polls in October 2023. The council has a total of 30 members out of which four are nominated. The NC had won 12 while the Congress won 10 seats in the crucial polls which were the first ever elections held in the area after the abrogation of Article 370. The PDP did not contest the local polls and had supported the NC.
The Congress had credited Rahul Gandhi's week-long trip to Ladakh in September of the same year for the poll outcome. The coming together of the Congress, PDP and NC had been witnessed after the conclusion of Rahul Gandhi’s first Bharat Jodo Yatra which had culminated at Srinagar on Jan 30, 2023. Both Mufti and the Abdullahs had joined Rahul Gandhi’s yatra in the UT of J&K.
“The Congress had been dented by the exit of former leader Ghulam Nabi Azad in 2022 but a lot of leaders who had gone have returned to the grand old party since then,” former J&K in charge Rajani Patil said.
