Srinagar: Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi will be in Jammu and Kashmir on a daylong visit on Wednesday during which he is scheduled to address two public rallies to kick-off the Congress party’s campaign for the Assembly elections being held in the Union Territory after a gap of ten years. Mr. Gandhi who is among the forty star campaigners of the Congress will arrive in Jammu from New Delhi early Wednesday morning and then fly in a helicopter to Sangaldan, a township which falls in the Gool-Gulabgarh area of the Chenab valley, to address a public rally and seek votes for Vikar Rasool Wani, former JKPCC chief and member of the AICC working committee who is seeking election from the Banihal segment. Later, Mr. Gandhi will fly to Dooru area of Kashmir Valley’s southern Anantnag district to address another public meeting being organised by the Congress. The party has fielded former minister and CWC member Ghulam Ahmed Mir from Dooru. Peerzada Muhammad Sayeed, another party stalwart and also a former JKPCC chief, is seeking election from neighbouring Anantnag segment. The polling in the first phase of elections will be held in 24 segments on September 18. In this phase, the party has fielded Surinder Singh Channi from Tral, Amanullah Mantoo from Devsar, Sheikh Zafarullah from Inderwal, Nadeem Sharief from Bhadarwah, Sheikh Riyaz from Doda and Dr Pradeep Kumar Bhagat from Doda West. There are 219 in the fray for this phase and 91 of them are contesting as independents. The Congress and regional National Conference (NC) have entered into a pre-poll alliance in J&K, the primary object of which is to defeat the BJP in these elections. However, since both the parties were facing rebellion by several aspirants who were being dropped out in the ticket allocations, they decided to have a “friendly” fight on five seats. Banihal is among those five seats where the NC has fielded Sajjad Shaheen, a key politician of the Chenab valley. In the remaining 85 segments, the NC is contesting on 51 seats and the Congress on 32 seats. Two seats have been left for the CPIM and Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers’ Party. The other star campaigners of the Congress include the party president Mallikarjun Kharge, CPP Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, party general secretary K.C. Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Rajani Patil, Ambika Soni, Ajay Maken, Salman Khurshid, Kanhaiya Kumar, Himachal Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, former Punjab CM Charanjit Singh Chhanni and former Rajasthan deputy chief Minister Sachin Pilot, Manish Tewari and Imran Pratapgarhi. The BJP’s election campaign will be led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the effort that is being joined also by Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, party chief Jagat Prakash Nadda and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Among the other star campaigners of the BJP include Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Manohar Lal Khattar, G Kishan Reddy, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Jitendra Singh and former union ministers Anurag Thakur and Smriti Irani and General (Retd.) V K Singh besides Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma and former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Jai Ram Thakur. Former BJP general secretary and RSS functionary Ram Madhav who was recently appointed as the party’s in-charge for the Assembly elections in J&K along with Union Minister G Kishan Reddy also figures in the list of its star campaigners. The second and third phase of the J&K Assembly elections are scheduled for September 25 and October 1. The counting of votes will be taken up on October 8.
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