BJP fields CEC LAHDC Leh Tashi Gyalson for Ladakh Lok Sabha seat

Kargil, Apr 23: Ending suspense over its candidature, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Tuesday announced its candidate for the crucial Ladakh parliamentary seat.

After over a month of wait and deliberations, the BJP fielded Tashi Gyalson as its candidate for the Ladakh Lok Sabha seat.

By announcing the candidature of Gyalson, the BJP dropped the sitting Member of Parliament Ladakh Jamyang Tsering Namgyal.

In the 2019 parliamentary elections, Namgyal won the Lok Sabha seat of Ladakh with a margin of 10,930 votes against a popular independent candidate Sajjad Kargili.

Advocate Tashi Gyalson is currently the Chief Executive Councillor and Chairman of Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) Leh.

Gyalson is a councillor from the Lingshed constituency.

In 2020, he was elected as Chairman and Chief Executive Councilor of the 6th Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Leh.

The BJP in Ladakh had shortlisted a panel of three candidates for the Parliament elections including sitting MP Ladakh, Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, LAHDC Leh CEC Tashi Gyalson, and Councillor of Cha constituency in Kargil district Stanzin Lakpa.

These three names were discussed and shortlisted by the BJP unit after thorough deliberations and sent to the party high command for final approval.

BJP has been facing a peculiar situation in fulfilling election commitment on the Sixth Schedule with opposition parties leveraging the party’s election manifestos released during the 2019 parliamentary elections and 2020 LAHDC Leh poll to mount pressure on the saffron party ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

The intense political pressure on the BJP from various religious, social, and political groups was evident from its delay in finalising its candidate for the lone Lok Sabha seat in Ladakh, which it won consecutively in the 2014 and 2019 elections.

Sitting MP Jamyang Namgyal hit the headlines in 2019 with his viral speech in Lok Sabha to defend the Narendra Modi government’s decision to repeal Article 370 and make Ladakh a separate Union Territory.

Congress and National Conference are yet to decide and take a call about the party candidates for the upcoming Parliament elections from Ladakh.

The NC in Ladakh, part of INDIA bloc, has left the seat for Congress on a seat sharing agreement.

Sources said that senior Congress leader from Leh and former minister Nawang Rigzin Jora and former MLA and senior Congress leader from Kargil, Asgar Ali Karbalai are frontrunners for the INDIA bloc’s Ladakh Lok Sabha seat candidature.

They said that the final decision about the candidate would be taken after the leadership meets and holds consultations with the party leaders and the leadership of the Leh Apex Body and Kargil Democratic Alliance.

The polling for the Ladakh parliamentary constituency is scheduled in the fifth phase of Lok Sabha polls on May 20.