Jammu Kashmir Assembly Election 2024: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday released its first list of 44 candidates for the upcoming Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections, but deleted it soon after. As per media reports, a fresh list is expected soon.
Three key names -- Jammu and Kashmir BJP president Ravinder Raina, and former Deputy Chief Ministers Nirmal Singh and Kavinder Gupta-- were missing from the now-deleted list. In the older list, the party had announced 15 candidates for the first phase, 10 for the second and 19 for the third round of polling. Among important names, the list featured three-time legislator Devender Singh Rana, who was fielded from Nagrota.
The delegated list also featured the names of two Kashmiri Pandits and 14 Muslim candidates. Names of several turncoats from Congress, National Conference (NC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Panthers Party, also featured in the now-deleted list.
The list included eight candidates from Kashmir--including Pampore, Shopian, Anantnag West and Anantnag-- and 36 from its stronghold Jammu division.
The BJP's Central Election Committee met on Sunday evening to finalise the party's candidates for the polls. Elections to the 90-member Jammu and Kashmir assembly will be held in three phases -- September 18, September 25, and October 1. The results will be declared on October 4.
This will be the first Assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir after the erstwhile state was bifurcated into two Union Territories in 2019 and lost its special status in 2019. In the last legislative polls held in the erstwhile state in 2014, BJP had won 25 seats and PDP then tied up to form the government.
The party is making all out efforts to fend off the challenge from a resurgent Congress, which has tied up with the National Conference, especially in the Jammu region, a BJP bastion since 2014.