Srinagar: In a surprising turn of events, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today unveiled a list of 44 candidates for the upcoming three-phase election to 90 Assembly seats in Jammu and Kashmir, only to retract it shortly afterward. According to BJP insiders, a revised list is expected to be released soon.
Notably absent from the now-deleted list were three key figures: Jammu and Kashmir BJP President Ravinder Raina, and former Deputy Chief Ministers Nirmal Singh and Kavinder Gupta. However, the list did include Devendra Rana, the brother of Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh, who recently switched allegiance from the National Conference to the BJP.
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The list also featured two Kashmiri Pandits and 14 Muslim candidates. Additionally, several former members of the Congress, National Conference, PDP, and Panthers Party, who had defected to the BJP, were included in the retracted list.
Jammu and Kashmir are set to vote in three phases on September 19, 25, and October 1, with vote counting scheduled for October 4. This election marks the first Assembly election in the region since the abrogation of its special status in 2019 and its reorganization into two Union Territories.
The BJP’s first candidate list was released following the finalization of the party’s selections by the Central Election Committee this morning. The committee’s decisions were made during a key meeting in Delhi yesterday, attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and BJP President JP Nadda.
The last Assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir took place in 2014, where the BJP made significant gains by winning 25 seats, while the PDP emerged as the largest party with 28 seats. The National Conference won 15 seats, and the Congress secured 12. A coalition government was subsequently formed between the BJP and PDP, led first by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and later by Mehbooba Mufti after his passing in 2016.
This upcoming election is expected to be a tripartite contest between the BJP, the PDP, and the National Conference-Congress alliance. However, the Congress and National Conference are still negotiating seat-sharing arrangements. Senior Congress leaders KC Venugopal and Salman Khurshid have been dispatched to Srinagar to resolve the ongoing issues.
Earlier, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi met with National Conference President Farooq Abdullah and Vice-President Omar Abdullah to announce their alliance for the elections.
