National Conference (NC) president Dr. Farooq Abdullah on Friday announced the names of Omar Abdullah and Shia cleric Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi as the party’s candidates from Baramulla and Srinagar constituencies, respectively, for the upcoming Lok Sabha election.
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Mr. Omar Abdullah, while speaking on his nomination, sought to project the upcoming election as a fight between the BJP’s proxies and the NC in the Kashmir Valley.
“This time, our fight is not against any individual. My fight is with those powers which are behind the candidates in the Kashmir Valley. It has been decided that I will be contesting from north Kashmir (Baramulla) because the BJP is focusing a lot on it. I want these powers to be defeated there,” Mr. Omar Abdullah said, in what was a veiled attack against the J&K Apni Party (JKAP) and the J&K Peoples Conference (JKPC).
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He is up against Sajad Lone of the JKPC in Baramulla. The Lones hail from north Kashmir’s Kupwara district and consider the seat their party bastion. However, it was the NC that won the 2019 election there by more than 30,000 votes.
“My fight is not against an individual, it is against the skullduggery, treachery, the political machinations of the BJP,” Mr. Omar Abdullah said.
On Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in Udhampur and promise of restoring Statehood and early Assembly election, he said, “It is the verdict of the Supreme Court. It would have been a favour for us if he [PM Modi] had conducted election before the SC verdict. It is now a compulsion for him. It is the SC’s verdict to conduct election in J&K before September 30. As far as Statehood is concerned, he could not explain to us till now why Article 370 was revoked,” Mr. Abdullah said.
In central Kashmir’s Srinagar seat, Mr. Mehdi will take on former Gupkar alliance partner and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader Waheed-ur-Rehmaan Parra. Mr. Mehdi’s father Aga Syed Mehdi, also a Shia cleric, was assassinated in an explosion on the Kanihama-Magam road in Budgam in 2000. The Mehdis are widely respected among the Shia community in Kashmir, which has a sizeable population in central and north Kashmir.
Mr. Mehdi emerged as a rare critical voice within the NC after abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 and expressed his displeasure over the party’s strategy several times. He was also a proponent of an electoral alliance with the PDP and used strong words in his speeches against the BJP’s move to end J&K’s special status. Both Mr. Mehdi and Mr. Parra are considered independent thinking and ideologically wedded candidates of their respective parties.