SrinagarOctober 13, 2025 08:10 PM IST
First published on: Oct 13, 2025 at 08:10 PM IST
THE National Conference is set to contest all the four Rajya Sabha seats in Jammu and Kashmir, for which elections are to be held on October 24, with ally Congress refusing its offer to contest seat number four.
The NC leadership had announced three candidates for the polls last week, and stated that discussions were on with the Congress for the fourth. However, on Sunday evening, PCC chief Tariq Hameed Karra said the alliance numbers meant that winning a fourth Rajya Sabha seat was impossible, and hence the Congress would not put up a candidate.
Indicating the Congress’s unhappiness with the NC, Karra said the party core committee that took the call also “evaluated our experience as part of the ruling alliance over the past year”. “We unanimously decided not to field our candidate for seat number four, since the safe seats that we had sought – No.s 1 and 2 – were not offered.”
Last week, NC general secretary Ali Mohammad Sagar had announced Chowdhary Mohammad Ramzan, Shammi Oberoi and Sajad Kitchloo as the party’s three Rajya Sabha candidates. On Monday, it named party spokesperson Imran Nabi Dar as its fourth candidate.
While Chowdhary Ramzan is a senior party leader from Kupwara who lost last year’s Assembly elections to Sajad Lone (People’s Conference), Sajad Kitchloo is a former NC legislator from Kishtwar who also lost in the state polls, to the BJP’s lone woman legislator, Shagun Parihar. Oberoi has long served as the NC treasurer and has worked closely with Omar, while Dar has been a part of the NC’s media team for a while now.
J&K Chief Minister and NC vice-president Omar Abdullah suggested that the party was not perturbed much by the Congress’s decision. “They have decided not to field a candidate. We felt that the best chance of winning that seat was with the Congress and they felt otherwise. So be it.”
The NC is the single-largest party in the 90-member J&K Assembly, with 41 MLAs. The Congress, which fought the 2024 Assembly polls in alliance with the NC, has just 6, while another ally, CPI(M) has 1 legislator. The NC can also count on the support of 4 Independents.
Pointing out that the BJP has 28 MLAs and has fielded three candidates, Abdullah said the Rajya Sabha polls will be “a true test of who is with the BJP and who is against”. “They need 30 (votes) to win a seat and they have 28… The BJP cannot win three seats without doing horse-trading. They cannot even win one seat without horse-trading… Not a single MLA besides their 28 has shown any support for the BJP in the past year… Which means that if they are claiming they are going to win three seats, it is money power, muscle power and the power of the agencies,” the CM said.
The NC also clarified that party president Farooq Abdullah will not be contesting these RS polls. On Monday, CM Abdullah stated that it was Farooq’s own decision since no one can “deny mandate” to “the tallest leader in J&K”.
The NC and Congress have had strained ties since the 2024 Assembly poll results, with the Congress staying out of government after the NC rustled a near-majority on its own. The Congress cited non-restoration of statehood to J&K as the reason.
While Congress MLAs have supported the NC government in the Assembly, leaders of the two parties are rarely seen together outside.