J&K’s new Deputy CM is recent import to NC from BJP, Omar says ‘kept promise to Jammu’

Omar said as much, telling reporters after the swearing-in: “I had said that we will not allow Jammu to feel that they do not have a voice or representative in this government. I have chosen a Deputy CM from Jammu so that the people of Jammu feel that this government is as much theirs as it is of the rest.”

Choudhary, 56, incidentally had quit the BJP, accusing Raina, whom he defeated, of “promoting family” and “corruption”. On his social media handle, he posted at the time: “Gud bye BJP… Ravinder Raina enjoy with your parivarbad and corruption”.

When Choudhary joined the NC, it was a second party change for the firebrand leader within a year, having resigned as PDP general secretary in April 2022 to join the BJP. At the time, Choudhary had cited as reason the public’s “love” and “affection” for the BJP for the delimitation panel under its government dividing Nowshera and Sunderbani into two separate Assembly constituencies.

Before he resigned and joined politics, Choudhary was an employee at the Sher-e-Kashmir Agriculture University, Jammu, where he headed a unit of the NC’s Mazdoor Union.

Choudhary’s first party was the BSP, and he contested his maiden Assembly election from Nowshera in 2009, getting 12,000 votes. By the time of the next Assembly elections in 2014, he was a PDP candidate from Nowshera and lost to the BJP’s Ravinder Raina by nearly 10,000 votes. After he joined the PDP, it made him an MLC.

Then, ahead of the 2024 Assembly elections, he left the BJP and joined the electoral fray as an NC candidate. He defeated Raina by 7,819 votes.