Jammu: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday released its first list of its candidates for the Phase-I Jammu and Kashmir Assembly Polls to be held on September 18.
The Phase-2 and Phase-3 Assembly elections will be held on September 25 and October 1 respectively.
The two lists included 16 candidates including one candidate Choudhary Roshan Hussain Gujjar from Kokernag seat also.
As per the released list, the candidates fielded in the Phase-I are Syed Showkat Gayoor Andrabi (Pampore), Arshid Bhat (Rajpora), Javed Ahmad Qadri (Shopian), Mohd. Rafiq Wani (Anantnag West), Syed Wazahat (Anantnag), Veer Saraf (Shangus-Anantnag East), Sofi Yousuf (Srigufwara-Bijbehara), Tariq Keen (Inderwal), Salim Bhat (Banihal), Shagun Parihar (Kishtwar).
Former minister Sunil Sharma (Padder-Nagseni), Daleep Singh Parihar (Bhaderwah), Gajay Singh Rana (Doda), Shakti Raj Parihar (Doda West), Rakesh Thakur (Ramban) are also among the candidates named in the list.
A total 24 seats will go to the polls in the first phase as per the notification issued by the Election Commission of India.
Meanwhile J&K BJP President Ravinder Raina after the release of the revised list said that the party will soon release the second list of candidates.
“We will fight the election in Jammu and Kashmir on our own and some independent candidates are also under consideration in the Kashmir valley,” Raina here told reporters.
He, however, said that as the last day of nominations for the first phase is August 27, the party has released the names of 16 candidates while the second list will soon be released.
UNI
