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| Jugal Kishore nominated for LC, Udhampur Cong up in arms | | Azad walks away with cake! | | Syed Junaid Hashmi
JAMMU, Mar 11: Amid high drama ahead of last day of filling nominations, Congress high command late in the evening nominated ex-Minister for Roads and Buildings Jugal Kishore to upper house of the state legislature.
Sources said that ex-Chief Minister and Union Health and Family Welfare minister walked away with cake despite tough opposition from Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) Chief Prof. Saif-ud-din Soz, who wanted the vacancy to be filled up from among the candidates representing Udhampur constituency.
Sources said that Soz, took up a principled stand urging the Congress High command to fill up the vacancy with someone from Udhampur, since the seat had got vacated due to untimely demise of late Yashpal Khajuria, who was from Udhampur. They added that Soz intimated top brass that Udhampur Congress had got representation in the upper house after 37 years and situation warranted for choosing a potential congress candidate from this constituency only.
Sources said that those whose names were discussed in New Delhi through Azad and Soz included ex-MLC Arvinder Singh Micky, ex-Deputy Chief Minister Mangat Ram Sharma, ex-MLA Jugal Kishore, District President of Udhampur Congress Bhupinder Singh Pathania and ex-MLC Gurmukh Singh. They added that Azad specifically pleaded with New Delhi Congress for nominating Jugal Kishore ahead of Mangat and Micky.
Sources asserted that Congress, which was facing uphill task of forming government in Uttrakhand, gave away to the choice of Azad and nominated Jugal Kishore for being elected to the upper house of state legislature. They said that Azad in return assured Congress forms government in Uttrakhand, where it was four short of majority. On the contrary, sources said Soz was pleading with Congress high command to either nominate someone from Udhampur or go for senior most congressman Mangat Ram Sharma.
However, Congress high command, which is essentially represented by UPA Chairperson and Congress President Sonia Gandhi, her political secretary Ahmad Patel and General Secretary Rahul Gandhi preferred the other way around and got Jugal Kishore nominated for being elected to the upper house of the state legislature. Miffed with the decision, sources said that JKPCC president is arriving in Jammu on Monday.
Azad loyalists are viewing this development as shot in the arm while those from the Soz group have termed it as discrimination with Udhampur district. These agitated Congress leaders are saying that Udhampur-Doda parliamentary constituency, from where eight Congress MLAs were elected during the last Assembly elections, has been ignored over Jammu-Poonch constituency, which gave only six MLAs to the party.
Despite getting more MLAs from Udhampur-Doda, Congress in return choose only two MLCs and two Ministers of State from the constituency whereas seven MLCs, four Cabinet ministers, one Minister of State and three Vice-Chairpersons of different Boards with status of Minister of State (MOS) have been taken from Jammu-Poonch Parliamentary constituency. With the addition of Jugal Kishore, the number of MLCs from Jammu-Poonch Parliamentary constituency has to 8.
Sources confirmed that as there was expected to be no other candidate in the fray, Jugal Kishore Sharma could be declared elected unopposed to the Upper House on March 12 itself, the last date for filing nomination papers. If only a single nomination paper is received on Monday, the candidate automatically stood elected as unopposed. However, a formal announcement of what is looking like an unopposed election would be made only on last date for withdrawal of nomination papers, which has been fixed as March 15.
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