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| Tactical battle for post of Jammu Mayor commences | | | Jammu | Mar 2
With the filing of nomination papers by the Congress candidate today the battle for the prestigious post of Jammu Mayor has started generating heat.
All the major political parties in the fray have started sharpening the political knives as no wants to get outmaneuvered in this elections.
In what can be described as a tactical move, Congress has decided not to fight for the post of deputy Mayor and speculation is rife that this has been done to help the National Conference candidate win this post.
In a similar gesture, National Conference also has not declared any candidate for the post of Mayor. All this has been done to ensure that Congress and NC capture the top two posts in the elections.
Interestingly, the Peoples Democratic Party which is alliance partner of Congress is also fighting for post of Mayor, despite the fact that the party has only two corporators in the Municipal corporation. PDP candidate for this post is corporator Zafar Iqbal.
Clearly pointing to the fissures between coalition partners, the decision of PDP to fight for Mayoral post, sources said adds to the rumours that National Conference and ruling Congress might help each other in the election in order to ward off the threat posed by BJP, which is also a strong contender for the post of Mayor.
There are 71 wards in the Jammu Municipal Corporation of which the Congress and PDP, the two coalition partners in the State have 29 wards (Congress 27 and PDP 2) while BJP and Shiv Sena alliance have 26 wards (BJP 25 and Shiv Sena 1). The National Conference has won six wards while independents bagged nine wards. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) also has one member in the Municipality.
For any party or candidate to win the post of a Mayor, the magical number of 36 has to be achieved and this makes the 9 independents, very important players in the electoral battle.
The BJP candidate for this post is former Mayor Kavinder Gupta, who was also elected to this post in 2005. A seasoned politician Gupta is likely to give a tough fight to other contenders, however, the internal bickering in the party might hurt his candidature.
Here, it must be mentioned that state BJP has been boiling with internal dissension as rival party groups allege that they have not got adequate representation in the executive.
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