Mehbooba Mufti To Contest From Anantnag Against Ghulam Nabi Azad, PDP Declares Three Candidates For Kashmir Valley

A few days after the People's Democratic Party (PDP) decided to contest all three seats of Kashmir valley in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the Mehbooba Mufti-led party declared the candidates on Sunday (7 April).

The party president Mehbooba Mufti will contest from Anantnag, a constituency where she earlier won twice in 2004 and 2014. Waheed Para is fielded from Srinagar and Fayaz Mir from Baramulla.

PDP's announcement came in response to the National Conference's (NC) similar decision to contest all three seats in Kashmir valley on its won, officially putting an end to the Congress-led INDI Alliance.

NC candidate in Anantnag is Mian Altaf Ahmad. Former Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad is contesting from here only on his Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) symbol, making the contest tripolar.

In the 2019 elections, all three seats of Kashmir Valley were won by the NC candidates. For the 2024 elections, it was proposed that the NC will contest the Srinagar and Baramulla seats while leaving the Anantnag seat for PDP.

However, having sitting MPs in all these three seats, the NC didn't want to spare even a single seat. This disappointed Mehbooba Mufti and left her with "no option" but to contest all three seats.

Mufti said that the PDP had left it to NC president Farooq Abdullah to decide the seat-sharing arrangement. However, the NC took the unilateral decision to contest all three seats in Kashmir.