PDP, BJP won’t fight each other in RS polls

“The Congress will field Ghulam Nabi Azad. He will be supported by the National Conference and independents,” said state Congress president Saifuddin Soz, who is among the four Rajya Sabha members from the state whose terms end next month.

After his 30-minute meeting with Sonia, former chief minister Omar tweeted that the two parties have “decided to combine forces to file a joint candidate for RS polls in J&K to snatch a seat from the unholy alliance”.

In the fractured Assembly, PDP’s 28 votes and BJP’s 25 polled together will easily bring them the first two seats. For the remaining two, both parties require support of at least five others as NC (15) and Congress (12) can jointly give them a tough fight on one seat. Though the PDP and BJP are silent whether they will vote for each other’s candidates during the polls, sources said of the first two seats for which separate elections will be held, they will contest one each. For the remaining two vacancies, to be filled through single election, each party will field one candidate.

The decision to not field candidates against each other became known on Tuesday after BJP announced the names of only two candidates — Shamsher Singh Manhas and Chander Mohan Sharma — for the Rajya Sabha polls.

For the other two vacancies, the PDP has already announced the candidature of Nazir Ahmad Laway and Fayaz Ahmad Mir, both of whom had narrowly lost last year’s assembly elections in Kulgam and Kupwara respectively.

The BJP has fielded two party veterans who have either worked with the RSS or Jansangh and served jail terms during Emergency. Shamsher Singh worked as an RSS pracharak for six years first at Kullu and then in Kathua district. He joined BJP after 1971 and worked in various positions as state president and then all India secretary of the party’s youth wing. He is currently a national executive member of the party.

The BJP’s second candidate, Chander Mohan Sharma, is national convener of the party’s J&K cell. He joined Jansangh in 1974, and later led the BJP’s state youth wing. He also worked as BJP’s state general secretary and later vice-president for nearly five years.

Pointing out that the four Rajya Sabha vacancies will be filled up through open ballot on February 7, Returning Officer M Ramzan said this will be the second time that there will be no secret voting in the state. There was open ballot in the last Rajya Sabha elections too in which the Congress and NC bagged two seats each.

— With ENS, Delhi