Congress party has pulled out of its upcoming elections in the Rajya Sabha in Jammu and Kashmir, which was to be held on October 24, following a refusal by its alliance partner National Conference (NC), to provide it a safe seat.
The four Union Territory seats of the Rajya Sabha have been vacant due to the retirement of Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mir Mohammad Fayaz, Shamsher Singh, and Nazir Ahmed Laway in 2021. With the approach of elections, Congress leaders were looking forward to an electionable position with the seat-sharing arrangement with the NC.
The decision was announced by Tariq Karra, the Jammu and Kashmir unit president of the Congress, during a press conference. He said that the party had been demanding either seat number one or number two, which are currently being fought in this election. But the NC returned but four seats under the usual announcement made of the polls to the Congress.
Karra reported that party leaders were in unison that they would not be politically safe to contest using seat number four. It was with this in mind that all the members of the meeting felt that seat four was not safe as compared to seat one or seat two. There was no dissent among us that we would not offer our candidate to seat number four. That will be left to our alliance friends to decide what they feel about that, he said. He also added that we did not want to oppose in seat four, as the safe seat was not provided to us.
On Monday, the National Conference had already shortlisted three candidates to occupy the four seats and submitted their nominations. The NC leaders indicated that they had left seat number four open to Congress. But it would need the support of all non-BJP lawmakers to sweep that seat, and this would be by no means certain for Congress.
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