Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, Mar 28: Opposition National Conference and Congress today formally announced their alliance for biennial elections to six seats of Legislative Council by deciding to field candidates on two seats-one each for Kashmir and Jammu divisions, taking number of contestants so far to seven as ruling PDP and BJP had yesterday named five candidates.
National Conference has named former Minister and Shia leader Aga Syed Mehmood for Kashmir seat while Congress will be fielding Balbir Singh, a party leader from Billawar, who had represented Billawar Assembly segment from 1996-2002, on Jammu seat.
All seven candidates of PDP, BJP, National Conference and Congress, in addition to others, if any, will file their nomination papers for six Legislative Council seats tomorrow before Returning Officer, Mohammad Ramzan, Secretary, Legislative Assembly, the last date for filing the papers.
Elections, wherever necessary, will be held on April 17.
Official sources told the Excelsior that if only seven candidates file nomination papers tomorrow, whose names have officially been announced so far by four major political parties-both Ruling and Opposition-at least four seats could be filled unopposed, leaving two seats of Jammu division for April 17 contest.
As of now, the Ruling and Opposition parties have only named three candidates for an equal number of seats of Kashmir division and all of them would make it to the Upper House of the Legislature uncontested unless the PDP names second candidate for the seat to force contest.
PDP has repeated Yasir Reshi for Kashmir seat while BJP has fielded RSS worker GL Raina alias Ajay Bharti. Opposition National Conference has named Aga Syed Mehmood as the party candidate. NC has the support of Congress too.
Similarly, BJP’s Pradeep Sharma is presently lone candidate for one seat reserved for Poonch district and he would also make it to the Legislative Council unless the Opposition fields candidate against him to enforce contest for the sake of formality.
However, two seats of Jammu division were now set for a contest as there were three candidates for them including PDP’s Abdul Qayoom Dar, BJP’s Vikram Randhawa and National Conference-backed Congress leader Balbir Singh.
As per the PDP-BJP agreement, PDP candidate Abdul Qayoom Dar will be given safe passage to the Legislative Council with 30 votes while remaining 28 votes would be polled to BJP nominee Vikram Randhawa. National Conference and Congress nominee Balbir Singh has 27 votes. The focus would shift to four Independent and Others including MY Tarigami (CPM), Hakim Yaseen (PDF), Pawan Gupta and Engineer Rashid as their votes or abstentions would decide the fate of Randhawa and Balbir Singh.
Sources said though PDP and BJP have decided to share three seats each, PDP might prefer to field two candidates only-one on Kashmir seat and another on Jammu seat as third seat allotted to the party in Kashmir has become completely unsafe after alliance between NC and Congress. On the other, BJP has named its three candidates-one each on Kashmir, Jammu and Poonch seats.
With tomorrow being last date for filing nomination papers for all six Legislative Council seats, the things would become clear by the evening.
Meanwhile, all seven candidates of PDP, BJP, NC and Congress have reached here to fill the nomination forms tomorrow. Senior leaders of the parties would join their candidates in filing the nominations.
Six seats are falling vacant in the Legislative Council on April 19, which will be filled on April 17 elections. The retiring MLCs included Dharamvir Singh Oberoi (now dead), Dr Bashir Ahmad Bhat (Veeri) and Master Noor Hussain, all three from National Conference, Jehangir Mir, sitting Deputy Chairman of Legislative Council and Jugal Kishore Sharma, both Congress and Yasir Reshi (PDP).
Oberoi had passed away few days back. Yasir Reshi has been re-nominated by the PDP while other four MLCs will retire.
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