In Jammu, a Congress candidate ensures vigil 24×7 to ‘secure’ mandate

It has been more than a month since voting ended in Udhampur-Doda parliamentary constituency. Retired Army Subedar Chandra Singh and Naib Tehsildar Kuldeep Singh have spent all their waking hours – if not the sleeping hours – in this time watching LED screens installed in a garage of the Government Degree College here, with only a pedestal fan to fight the heat.

The screens livestream CCTV cameras fitted outside the strongrooms holding EVMs where the fate of 12 contestants fighting in the seat, including Union minister Dr Jitendra Singh and former J&K minister Choudhary Lal Singh, is sealed.

Lal Singh, the BJP leader-turned-Congress candidate, who also keeps dropping in to keep an eye, says voters have warned him to be “vigilant”. “We have to accept the advice of the people, who have showered so much love on me. Otherwise, they will say they voted for me, but I was lax,’’ Singh says.

The implication is that the BJP may try to fudge the results, with Chandra Singh claiming: “We have learnt a lesson from 2019, when Dr Jitendra Singh managed to win despite a lot of resentment against him in the constituency… We do not want to take a chance.”

Jitendra Singh incidentally won the Udhampur-Doda seat hands down, getting 3.57 lakh votes more than his nearest rival, the Congress’s Vikramaditya Singh, the scion of the erstwhile J&K royal family. Lal Singh contested as an Independent, and got only 19,049 votes.

However, this time, Lal Singh is seen as having mounted a tough challenge to Jitendra Singh in the seat, which voted on April 19.

His supporters are now keeping a vigil on the strongrooms holding the EVMs 24X7, in 10-hour shifts. The Udhampur-Doda parliamentary constituency has 18 Assembly segments, and the EVMs are stored Assembly