Congress leader Choudhary Lal Singh on Sunday charged that the Democratic Progressive Azad Party’s decision to field former minister G M Saroori instead of founder Ghulam Nabi Azad from Udhampur constituency shows that the party is not fighting to win but to cut the votes of the opposition.
The 65-year-old Singh, who recently rejoined Congress, is pitted against Union Minister Jitendra Singh who is seeking his re-election from Udhampur Lok Sabha seat for the third consecutive term.
Udhampur parliamentary constituency is going to polls in the first phase on April 19 and so far five candidates, including union minister and DPAP vice chairman and former minister Saroori have filed their nominations. Lal Singh is filing his nomination papers in the next couple of days.
Hailing from Kathua district, Lal Singh had won the Udhampur seat twice on Congress tickets in 2004 and 2009, besides being a three-time former MLA. He switched from the grand old party to the BJP in 2014 and was also a minister in the previous PDP-BJP government in Jammu and Kashmir that collapsed in June 2018 after the national party pulled out of the alliance.
Several months before the government’s fall, Lal Singh resigned from the BJP and floated his own outfit Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan party (DSSP) following an uproar over his participation in a rally in support of the accused in a rape-and-murder case of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua in January 2018. However, he defended his participation in the rally, stating that he was there to ”defuse the situation”.
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