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Journalism of Courage
National Conference (NC) vice-president Omar Abdullah will be contesting the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections from the family turf of Ganderbal. Omar had already dropped several hints that he had given up his decision not to contest the Assembly polls.
His name figured among the 32 new names announced by the NC Tuesday, a day after it released a list of 18.
Omar was the Ganderbal MLA from 2009 to 2014.
The five Assembly seats where both allies NC and Congress are set to field candidates are likely to be Sopore, Banihal, Bhaderwah, Doda and Nagrota. Of the five, Sopore was among the four seats that the Congress won in the Kashmir region in the 2014 Assembly elections, out of its total of 12. The Congress also won Banihal, while the BJP got Bhaderwah and Doda. Nagrota was won by the NC.
Barring Sopore, all these five seats are in the Jammu region.
On Monday, the NC and Congress announced a deal for 83 of the 90 Assembly seats in the Union territory, with the NC contesting 51 and the Congress 32. The allies said they would leave Kulgam in Kashmir and Chenani in Jammu for the CPI(M) and J&K Panthers Party, respectively.
Justifying the NC’s decision not to withdraw from the five Assembly seats where it could not reach an agreement with the Congress, Kashmir province president Nasir Aslam Wani said: “We have had constituency in-charges in place in every constituency post delimitation, and they have been working on the ground since… We decided that whoever wins (in the five seats), it would be a win for the alliance.”
Wani, who was part of the NC team that held seat negotiations with the Congress, added: “Everyone takes a hit, as have we. We have people who want to leave because they have worked hard on the ground for a long time (and not got tickets).”
Late on Monday night, the Congress put out names of its candidates for nine seats.
For the Banihal seat, one of the five set to have both Congress and NC candidates, the Congress’s frontrunner is Vikar Rasool, who was replaced as J&K chief by the party in the days leading up to the poll announcement. The NC has announced senior leader Sajad Shaheen as its candidate from Banihal.
Rasool won the seat in 2014 by a margin of over 17,000 votes, defeating the PDP candidate.
Sources said that the Congress fought hard to get the Banihal seat in its quota. The other constituencies which it insisted on and managed to get, and from where it has also fielded former PCC chiefs, are Dooru (G A Mir, who filed his nomination on Tuesday) and Anantnag (Peerzada Mohammad Syed) in Kashmir.
Of the other constituencies headed for friendly fights, the Congress has fielded Nadeem Sharif, a District Development Council member, from Bhaderwah; and Sheikh Riyaz, a party general secretary, from Doda. The NC has fielded former bureaucrat Mehboob Iqbal and NC Jammu vice-president Khalid Najeeb Soharwardy from the two seats, respectively.
Iqbal was the PDP candidate from Bhaderwah in 2014, and finished third behind BJP and Congress candidates.
For the fourth Jammu constituency where both the NC and Congress will field candidates, Nagrota, neither has announced a candidate. The BJP has nominated former NC strongman Devender Rana from here, who won this seat in 2014 on the NC ticket.
The other candidates announced by the Congress Monday night were Surinder Singh Channi from Tral and Amanullah Mantoo from Devsar, both in Kashmir; and Sheikh Zafarullah from Inderwar and Pradeep Kumar Bhagat from Doda West, both in Jammu.
