Jammu and Kashmir Assembly Elections 2024: Two more leaders quit BJP over selection of candidates for polls

Jammu: Two more BJP leaders, including a district president, submitted their resignations from the primary membership of the party on Saturday, citing their resentment against the choice of candidates in their constituencies for the Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir.

In a related development, hundreds of BJP workers took out a rally in the Khour block of the Chhamb Assembly constituency in the outskirts of Jammu against fielding former MLA Rajeev Sharma from there.

The BJP is facing resentment over its ticket distribution in the Union Territory immediately after it started releasing the list of candidates for the Assembly elections on August 26, with party leaders and workers protesting in several districts of the Jammu region.

In a damage control exercise, the party mobilised several top leaders, including Union ministers, to reach out to disgruntled leaders to defuse the situation. Two of its rebel leaders have already filed their nominations as independent candidates from Ramban and Padder-Nagseni Assembly constituencies, which are among 24 constituencies going to polls in the first phase of the three-phased elections on September 18.

“With a heavy heart, I am submitting my resignation from the primary membership of the party for which I have worked for 42 long years. I was compelled by the circumstances after the party gave ticket to a person who had come from the National Conference (NC) and vociferously opposed our ideology for decades,” party’s Samba district president Kashmir Singh said.

The BJP has fielded former minister Surjit Singh Slathia, who joined the party in October 2021 after quitting the NC, from the Samba constituency which was opened in the general category after being reserved for the Scheduled Castes for 28 years.

“We strengthened the BJP in Samba and made numerous sacrifices to carry forward the ideology of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mukherjee and the BJP. We held demonstrations and organised strikes for the revocation of Article 370 and the ticket was given to the one who was always against our ideology and the revocation of Article 370. This is not justice with ordinary workers,” Singh alleged.

However, Singh said he will take back his resignation if the party leadership decides to change the candidate and give ticket to any senior member of the party, otherwise he said, “I am going to take forward this struggle and file my nomination papers as an independent candidate against him.” He said it was a difficult decision for him to leave the party which he had nourished with “my blood and sweat”.

In his resignation letter to Jammu and Kashmir BJP chief Ravinder Raina, he said he asked for “one reason for denying me the ticket, but no one was able to give a reply.”

“The party valued me as a leader only when work was needed, but when it came to distributing tickets, they brought in someone from outside. If the ticket had been given to any party worker, I would not have taken this step, but bringing an outsider has left me with no other option,” he said, alleging that the BJP has become a place where favouritism overshadows dedication.

Another BJP youth leader Kanav Sharma also resigned from the party to protest against ticket to a “corrupt leader”.

Kanav Sharma, Jammu district president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, said he is a third generation member of his family associated with the organisation and its ideology but the decision of the party to give ticket to Yudhvir Sethi from Jammu East is not acceptable to his conscience.

“Sethi is well known for his corrupt practices when his wife Priya Sethi was education minister… I hereby tender my resignation along with my team members and my team is dissolved with immediate effect,” Sharma said in his resignation letter posted on social media.

The BJP faced strong resentment from party workers from Jammu North, Jammu East, Paddar, Ramban, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi, Chhamb and Akhnoor constituencies over ticket distribution.