Jammu and Kashmir regional party the National Conference (NC) announced on Tuesday it had entered a seat sharing arrangement with the Indian National Congress (INC) for the upcoming general elections in India.
The general election for the lower house of the Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha, will be in the months of April and May.
Nasir Aslam Wani, the provincial president of NC, told Sputnik the electoral alliance came about after the two parties held a key meeting on poll strategy.
Jammu and Kashmir has five Lok Sabha seats and Ladakh region has one. The NC has decided to field its candidates in the three seats of the Muslim-majority Kashmir region while Congress party will fight for the two seats in Hindu-majority Jammu.
“We are still discussing the Ladakh seat,” said Wani.
Sources in the party said former state chief Omar Abdullah, tribal politician Miyan Altaf and prominent Shia politician Syed Aga Roohullah will contest the three Kashmiri seats.
Sputnik reported last week that NC will decide to contest all three seats in Kashmir, leaving it at loggerheads with the other major regional power, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).
Both NC and PDP are part of the INDIA alliance, a coalition of pan-Indian parties opposed to the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). The PDP, with which NC was formerly in the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Deceleration (PAGD) alliance, is yet to make an official statement.
The PAGD is a group of political parties demanding the restoration of Kashmir’s statehood, revoked by the federal government of India in August 2019.
A senior politician from the PDP told Sputnik on Tuesday that the NC’s decision to fight all seats alone will hurt its chances of winning
“It will be damaging for NC and for Kashmir in general,” they said, requesting anonymity.
At the last general election, held in 2019, the NC had emerged victorious in all the three seats in Kashmir. But the PDP maintains a strong base in southern parts of the union territory.
Sunil Sharma, a former minister and senior member of the BJP, told Sputnik that “opposition alliances will not hurt the chances” of his party to emerge victorious in all seats in J&K and Ladakh.
“The people of J&K have realised that parties that have engaged in dynastic politics have only hurt the region. People will vote for BJP,” Sharma said.
Another BJP leader acknowledged that an opposition alliance in Kashmir province would have made winning difficult for the BJP. But the politician expressed confidence in winning the two seats in Jammu and one in Ladakh.
The BJP has never won a Lok Sabha seat in the Kashmir province. However, with political manoeuvring, announcement of reservations in jobs and educational institutions for socially-disadvantaged communities and the exercise of delimitations — redrawing of electoral boundaries — the BJP sees a chance to win at least one of the three seats in Kashmir.