J&K political parties readying to announce candidates for Assembly polls

Political parties got into election mode on Monday as they hastened to choose candidates for various Assembly constituencies in Jammu & Kashmir.

National Conference (NC) headed by Dr Farooq Abdullah has said that the party will announce candidates for all the 90 seats in the UT after the first notification for the 3-phased Assembly election is issued by the Election Commission of India (ECI).

The ECI has announced a 3-phase election in J&K with the voting in the first phase to be held on September 18, the second phase on September 25 and the last and final phase on October 1.

Counting of votes will be held on October 4 and the entire poll process will end by October 6.

The NC president has already announced his decision to fight the Assembly elections while his choice of constituency has not been made public yet.

For the Sheikh family, the north Kashmir Ganderbal Assembly seat is believed to be a party stronghold although NC Vice President, Omar Abdullah was defeated in this constituency by Qazi Mohammad Afzal of the PDP in the 2002 elections.

Still then, given the NC base and cadre in Ganderbal, where the NC founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah fought the first election in 1975 when he returned to mainstream politics, it is widely believed that Dr Abdullah would fight the election from this constituency.

 Omar Abdullah has so far expressed his unwillingness to fight the Assembly polls as long as J&K is a UT. Yet, given the party pressure on him, it is likely that Omar will also join the electoral fray to improve the lot of his party.

Former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, president of PDP, was engaged on Monday with party leaders to decide on the party's choice of candidates.

Likely, the PDP would soon announce its candidates while party sources said that Mehbooba Mufti's daughter, Iltija Mufti is likely to fight the elections from Anantnag town where her grandfather late Mufti Sayeed fought Assembly polls last time in 2014.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will also announce its candidates soon. Party sources indicated that the list of candidates would be a mix of new and old faces.

The Congress party is likely to field its local leaders like Raman Bhalla, G.A. Mir, Vikar Rasool Wani and others while bringing in new faces to compensate for the desertions by its old timers like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Taj Mohiuddin, G.M.Saroori and others.

Whatever the choice of candidates of different parties, the electoral battle is no longer going to be what was once called the 'battle of ideas'.

It is going to be a battle between those whose promises have concretised into realities like the abrogation of Article 370 and the complete merger of J&K with the rest of the country and those claiming to reverse the hands of the clock if voted to power.

(With inputs from IANS)