Srinagar: Three Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates on Monday filed their nomination papers for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections for four seats from Jammu and Kashmir.
The BJP has fielded candidates for three of these seats — J&K party president Sat Sharma, Ali Mohammad Mir, and Rakesh Mahajan — who submitted their nominations before Manoj Kumar Pandita, Secretary of the J&K Assembly and the returning officer for the polls.
The candidates were accompanied by Union Minister of State in the PMO Dr. Jitendra Singh, Rajya Sabha MP Ghulam Ali Khatana, and several senior party leaders.
Speaking to reporters, Leader of Opposition in the J&K Assembly Sunil Sharma said the BJP was contesting three of the four seats and would make every effort to secure victory in all of them.
“We will do whatever it takes to win all three seats,” Sharma asserted.
Earlier, the BJP candidates led a procession from the party headquarters at Jawahar Nagar to the returning officer’s office, joined by most of the party’s MLAs and leaders from the Valley.
The Election Commission of India has issued three separate notifications for the four Rajya Sabha seats — conducting elections separately for two seats and jointly for the other two.
With an effective strength of 88 MLAs in the J&K Assembly, the BJP’s 28 MLAs give it a realistic chance of securing one seat on its own. Winning additional seats would require support from non-BJP legislators or abstentions in the voting for the two seats under the common notification.
