Kargil NC leaders, Congress district unit rally behind Independent candidate Haji Haneefa Jan

CNN Central News & Network–ITDC India Epress/ITDC News Bhopal: Contrary to the expectation that the the NC and the Congress will field a joint candidate against the BJP in Ladakh, the region is now witnessing a triangular contest after the local Kargil leaders from the two parties decided to support Haji Haneefa Jan who contesting as an Independent candidate.

The development has upset the plan of the NC and Congress to take on the BJP unitedly. With Sajjad Kargil and Kacho Mohammad Feroz opting out of the contest, only three candidates are now left in the race for the Ladakh Lok Sabha seat, including Tashi Gyalson (BJP), Tsering Namgyal (Congress) and Jan.

Gyalson and Namgyal are from the Buddhist-dominated Leh district, while Jan belongs to the Muslim- majority Kargil district. The poll for the lone Lok Sabha seat will be held in the fifth phase on May 20.

Last week, the NC leaders from Kargil submitted en masse resignations in protest against the party’s pressure on them to support the Congress candidate instead of Jan.

Qamar Ali Akhoon, the NC Additional Secretary (Ladakh) and former minister in the erstwhile J&K state government, in a letter to NC President Farooq Abdullah, conveyed the Kargil unit’s decision to resign en masse from the party’s primary membership.

The resignations came after the NC leadership directed its Ladakh unit, especially in Kargil, to support the Congress candidate. As per the seat-sharing agreement, the NC and the Congress shared three Parliamentary seats in J&K and Ladakh. The Ladakh seat had gone to the Congress as per the agreement.

However, the NC Kargil unit revolted against the party decision and fielded its district president Jan as an Independent candidate with the backing of the Congress district unit. Several social and religious organisations of Kargil are also backing Jan.

“The NC high command was pressuring us to extend support to Tsering Namgayal, the official Congress candidate from Ladakh, but it was against the decision taken by Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA), which has put up Haji Hanifa Jan as its candidate,” Akhoon said. The KDA is a coalition of political and religious bodies of Kargil that has joined forces with the Leh Apex Body, which represents religious and political parties of Leh backed by the influential Ladakh Buddhists Association (LBA), for statehood and Sixth Schedule for Ladakh.