Sajad Lone, 57, president of the Jammu Kashmir Peoples Conference (JKPC), was nominated on Monday as the party’s candidate for the Baramulla Lok Sabha seat in north Kashmir.
“For the Baramulla Parliamentary seat, the leadership and the rank and file of the party has overwhelmingly endorsed the candidature of Mr. Lone. The party leadership wishes him the best and believes that the fiercest speeches on the floor of the Parliament, advocating the just cause of our people, will finally be delivered by Mr. Lone after a painful wait of seven decades,” JKPC General Secretary Imran Reza Ansari said.
The party has not named any candidates for the four other constituencies of the Union Territory of J&K. “We will take a call about other seats based on our limited resources and also how best to defeat the common enemy of the people of J&K,” Mr. Ansari said.
He said the party will fight from other seats “only where we believe we can win on our own and either seek support or give support respectively to any party best suited to defeat the biggest enemy of the people of J&K”.
“We will not fight in the Jammu region and will not be instrumental in wasting or diverting a single vote through vote division,” Mr. Ansari said.
On the seats of the Kashmir valley, Mr. Ansari said the party’s position about the other two seats will become clear in the coming week or at the most two weeks.
Mr. Lone is the son of assassinated Hurriyat leader Abdul Gani Lone, who was also a three-time Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA). Junior Lone quit the separatist Hurriyat in 2009 and decided to contest the Lok Sabha polls that year. He emerged as the third winner with 65,403 votes during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. His party may not have won the Parliament seat of north Kashmir till date but has always been a strong contender. The party jumped from number three position in the 2014 Parliament polls to number two in 2019.
