New Delhi, Aug 27: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday announced 29 more candidates for the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections, bringing the total number of seats for which nominees have been revealed to 45.
Devender Singh Rana will contest from Nagrota, while Satish Sharma has been named for Billawar, a seat previously held by former Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh in the 2014 assembly elections.
The party made a single adjustment to its previous candidate list, which was released and then rescinded on Monday. Baldev Raj Sharma will now contest from Mata Vaishno Devi instead of Rohit Dubey.
All other candidate names remain unchanged from the list announced the day before. The new list includes 10 candidates for the second phase of polling and 19 for the third phase.
The BJP has yet to announce nominees for Nowshera, formerly represented by current state president Ravinder Raina, and Gandhinagar, which was held by former Deputy Chief Minister Kavinder Gupta in the last elections.
So far, the party has announced the names of 45 candidates. On August 26, the party released a trimmed version with 15 names. Later one name was added. The third list with 29 names was released on August 27 with just one change of candidate.
Stakes are high for all major political parties in the fray, but higher for the Bharatiya Janata Party which has claimed that the Centre’s 2019 decision to abrogate Article 370 has ushered in a new era of development and peace in the Kashmir Valley. While the Congress and the NC have announced a pre-poll alliance, others are entering the fray on their own.
The elections in Jammu and Kashmir will be held in 90 Assembly seats of the Union Territory on September 18, September 25, and October 1. The elections will be the first after the delimitation exercise which saw the number of seats increase from 87 to 90.
