Jugal, Jitendra win BJP nomination for Jammu, Udhampur LS seats

Jammu, Mar 2: Belying all speculations, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Saturday decided to nominate its tried-n-tested incumbent duo of Dr Jitendra Singh and Jugal Kishore Sharma as its Lok Sabha candidates from Udhampur and Jammu constituencies respectively in the electoral battle of 2024.

Their names figured in the first list of 195 candidates, including the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, issued by BJP Central Election Committee (CEC) this evening.

CEC, which comprises the BJP national president J P Nadda; Prime Minister; Union Home Minister and Defence Minister besides other members, so far only cleared names of two candidates against five parliamentary seats of J&K.

This has left behind a good scope for fresh round of speculations about its probable candidates from three other parliamentary constituencies viz., Rajouri-Anantnag; Baramulla and Srinagar.

Similarly, the party has yet not decided its candidate for the lone parliamentary seat from Ladakh Union Territory.

Out of these three constituencies, it is newly-carved Rajouri-Anantnag (erstwhile Anantnag) Lok Sabha seat, following delimitation which has generated intense debate and interest among the politicians, analysts and even among the prospective voters. Though on the face of it, the BJP, for public posturing, is projecting all five seats from J&K “in its kitty” yet its leadership genuinely believes that in any case, it will emerge victorious from Jammu and Udhampur seats and it is in a position to lap up even Rajouri-Anantnag seat, if all goes by its political manoeuvring.

Going by inputs gathered from party insiders, the prospects of J&K BJP president Ravinder Raina winning nomination from this seat seem brighter.

“The party, seemingly, has not taken a call on this constituency in the first list as it wants to get a fair idea about its (BJP’s) prospects and winning potential of candidate (from list of probables) after the Prime Minister’s ensuing visit to Kashmir next week. It is very likely that the CEC will decide on Rajouri-Anantnag and other two LS seats from Kashmir after analysing the impact of high-profile visit,” opines a veteran journalist, who closely follows BJP politics.

Coming back to the two candidates, who won party’s mandate today, the duo of Dr Jitendra and Jugal, as per party sources, bagged nomination on the basis of their impressive performance in the past two elections.

For both, this will be the third consecutive electoral battle from the same constituencies and probably against the same opponents, in terms of parties.

As far as opponent candidates are concerned, conundrum persists amid political cacophony.

In 2019, Jugal Kishore from Jammu-Poonch parliamentary seat had defeated the Congress candidate Raman Bhalla with a margin of 3,02,875 votes while Dr Jitendra Singh had annexed Udhampur-Kathua-Doda LS seat by defeating his nearest rival Congress candidate Vikramaditya Singh by a margin of 3.57 lakh votes. In the case of Dr Jitendra, the victory margin was among ten highest margins registered across the country in 2019.

This was in spite of the fact that the National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had not fielded their candidates to avoid division of votes.

Besides, Chowdhary Lal Singh, after leaving BJP in 2019 (following a short stint there) had turned rebel and contested from both the constituencies. He had to eat a humble pie from both the places by forfeiting his security deposits even.

For both Jugal and Dr Jitendra, 2019 was an improved performance. In 2014, Dr Jitendra had earned sobriquet of “giant-killer” after defeating the former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, a Congress candidate with a margin of 62,000 votes.

Similarly, Jugal had won the Jammu seat in 2014 with a victory margin of 2.57 lakh votes against Congress’ Madan Lal Sharma.