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Jammu and Kashmir Poll: The bugle for assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir has been sounded this year. All the political parties have started preparing for the three-phase elections. Meanwhile, sources are saying that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may contest 60 to 70 seats for the 90-member Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.
This information came to light after the meeting of the party's Central Election Committee (CEC). Sources said that during the meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attended by top BJP leadership including Amit Shah and JP Nadda, the party also decided to withdraw the candidature of some prominent personalities from the Jammu region.
As expected, the BJP is going to contest the assembly elections without allying with any party after nearly a decade. Instead, the party will support strong independent candidates in constituencies in the Kashmir Valley where it will not field its candidates, sources said.
In the last assembly elections held in 2014, the BJP and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) formed a coalition government with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed as the chief minister. After Sayeed's death in January 2016, Mehbooba Mufti succeeded her father after a brief stint as governor.
In June 2018, the BJP walked out of the PDP-led coalition government, leading to the dissolution of the assembly by then governor Satya Pal Malik in November that year. Since then, there has been no legislative assembly in Jammu and Kashmir.
Meanwhile, the National Conference (NC), BJP's biggest rival in the previous state, has already formed an alliance with the Congress and is contesting all the 90 seats. However, the final number of seats on which the two parties will contest is yet to be announced.
Sources had earlier said that the Congress had expressed its willingness to contest 12 seats in the Kashmir Valley, while Farooq Abdullah's party was offered the same number of seats in the Jammu division. Elections for the 90 assembly seats in Jammu and Kashmir will be held in three phases on September 18, September 25 and October 1. The results are expected to be declared on October 4.
This will be the first assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir after Article 370, which earlier gave special status to the state, was revoked in 2019 and bifurcated into two union territories – Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Administered as a union territory since 2019, Jammu and Kashmir is under the command of the Lieutenant Governor, currently Manoj Kumar Sinha, with major powers.