Jammu: The BJP will set the ball rolling for the elections to the four Rajya Sabha seats of Jammu and Kashmir by holding a core group meeting here on Saturday.
The Election Commission (EC) announced on September 25 that the elections to the four Rajya Sabha seats in the Union Territory would be held on October 24, more than four years after they fell vacant.
“The core group meeting of the Jammu and Kashmir BJP will be held at the party headquarters here at 10 am on Saturday to discuss various issues of importance,” spokesperson of the saffron party Girdhari Lal Raina told PTI.
He said the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) national general secretary and in-charge for Jammu and Kashmir Tarun Chugh will preside over the meeting.
However, Raina refused to dwell on the details of the probable candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls.
According to sources, the BJP will formally set the process in motion for finalising its candidates at Saturday’s meeting.
“The meeting will discuss the Rajya Sabha polls and the candidates. The names of three-four leaders are expected to come up for discussion,” a source in the BJP said.
Some of the names doing the rounds in party circles include former Jammu and Kashmir BJP chief Ravinder Raina, former deputy chief minister Nirmal Singh and a woman leader.
The meeting will also discuss other issues, including the political situation in Jammu and Kashmir and the forthcoming Assembly bypolls in Nagrota and Budgam.
The last date for filing nominations for the Rajya Sabha polls is October 13. The counting of votes will be taken up in the evening of October 24, an hour after polling concludes.
Polling for the four Rajya Sabha seats in the Union Territory is being held nearly a year after the Assembly polls.
The seats fell vacant in February 2021, when the terms of then MPs Mir Mohammad Fayaz, Shamsher Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Nazir Ahmed Laway ended. Since Jammu and Kashmir was under President’s Rule at the time and there was no Assembly in place, the polls to the four seats could not be held.
The Jammu and Kashmir Assembly was formed in November last year, after the first Assembly election for the Union Territory, which was established in 2019.
