National Conference cuts Mehbooba no slack, fields LS candidate from her home seat

The National Conference (NC) on Monday announced the candidature of senior party leader Mian Altaf Ahmed Lahrvi from the Anantnag-Rajouri parliamentary seat, which is the home constituency of the NC’s INDIA alliance partner and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti. Both Mehbooba, who won from Anantnag in 2014, and her father and PDP founder Mufti Mohammad Sayeed have represented the constituency in Parliament.

Lahrvi is a five-time former MLA from Kangan in central Kashmir and has served as a Cabinet minister in the governments of both Farooq and Omar Abdullah. Announcing the candidature, Omar said, “There is no better candidate for the Anantnag-Rajouri seat than Mian sahab. People are familiar with his track record. He has never asked for votes based on religion or caste and has tried to make everyone work with him.”

The NC has publicly maintained that it wants to contest all three Lok Sabha seats in the Kashmir Valley and its decision to stick to it places a question mark over the Peoples Alliance for the Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), an alliance of political parties in the Valley that was formed in 2020 to fight for the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.

While the PDP has not formally announced Mehbooba’s candidature, she has been doing the rounds of Rajouri in the last few days. “The PDP as a party was looking for contesting elections as a unified force to present a united voice to 125 crore Indians about the situation in J&K. Unfortunately some of the constituents under compulsion have defied people’s wish and broke away from PAGD,” PDP spokesperson Mohit Bhan told The Indian Express, adding that the PDP would go solo with the support of like-minded people and organisations. “The