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As discontent continues to simmer in the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir over the allocation of tickets for the upcoming Assembly polls, the party’s national president J P Nadda Monday appointed former minister Sat Sharma as working president of its J&K unit.
Former deputy chief ministers Nirmal Singh and Kavinder Gupta have been appointed as the BJP’s J&K election campaign committee chairman and state election management committee head, respectively.
All the three senior J&K leaders have been denied the party tickets for the Assembly elections.
In the 2014 polls, Sat Sharma and Nirmal Singh were elected as the BJP MLAs from the Jammu West and Billawar constituencies, respectively. However, they were dropped from the list of the party’s poll nominees now, with the party replacing them with Arvind Gupta in Jammu West and Satish Sharma in the Billawar seat.
Kavinder Gupta is the former BJP MLA from the erstwhile Gandhi Nagar constituency. His name however did not figure as the party candidate from either Bahu or R S Pura Jammu South – the two new constituencies carved in the wake of the 2022 J&K delimitation exercise, which include the Gandhi Nagar areas.
In Bahu, the BJP has fielded its former MLC Vikram Randhawa, the son of senior party leader Choudhary Piyara Singh, who was elected to the Assembly from Gandhi Nagar in 2002. The party has named Prof Narinder Singh Raina as its candidate from the RS Pura Jammu South constituency.
Nadda also appointed Choudhary Sukhnandan as the vice-chairperson of the party’s J&K poll campaign committee.
Ex-minister Sukhnandan is a former MLA from the Marh constituency, which was reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC) in the wake of the delimitation.
This time, the BJP leadership has fielded Surinder Bhagat from the Marh seat. Sukhnandan, according to party insiders, was upset over this decision as he wanted a candidate of his choice to be nominated from his constituency.
However, troubles continue to brew in the BJP over the ticket distribution, with J&K party general secretary Pawan Khajuria likely to contest as an Independent from the Udhampur East constituency. He was eyeing this seat for the upcoming polls, but the party has instead fielded R S Pathania from there.
Hundreds of Khajuria’s supporters held a meeting in Jammu Monday, giving an ultimatum to the BJP high command to change its decision by Wednesday noon. Otherwise, they made it clear that Khajuria will contest the election from Udhampur East as an Independent. Khajuria, who has been associated with the BJP for over 35 years, was also present at the meeting that lasted for three hours.
Khajuria was fielded by the BJP from Udhampur in the 2014 polls, but he lost to Pawan Gupta, a party rebel who contested the election as an Independent.
Pathania had switched to the BJP from the Congress before the 2014 Assembly elections. He then got elected as the MLA from the Ramnagar seat on the BJP’s ticket, defeating ex-minister and three-time Panthers Party MLA Harsh Dev Singh.
Recently, senior BJP leader Chander Mohan Sharma quit the party to protest the allotment of ticket to state party vice-president Yudvir Sethi from the Jammu East seat, which he was looking to contest.
The BJP’s Samba district president Kashmir Singh has also quit the party to protest against the allocation of its ticket to ex-minister Surjit Singh Slathia from the Samba seat. A former National Conference leader, Slathia joined the BJP a few years ago.
