The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday (August 31) suffered a setback as the party's chief in Samba District in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir resigned from all positions in the party. Singh has quit the party as he made his dissatisfaction about party ticket allotments known. Jammu and Kashmir will soon go to assembly polls.
Singh has written a strongly-worded resignation letter to party's state-chief Ravinder Rana. In it, Singh has openly stated that he was unhappy over party choice for assembly elections in the constituency. He said that he was 'disillusioned' with BJP.
BJP has fielded Surjit Singh Slathia from Samba. Slathia was earlier part of National Conference (NC) and was even a minister in the state government.
In his resignation letter, Kashmira Singh has said that he has fought against Slathia for many years in his political life and thus did not like the idea of having to campaign for him before upcoming elections. Singh made his displeasure clear and said that those who served the party faithfully for many years were being sidelined for those who joined the party relatively recently.
"The party valued me as a leader only when work was needed, but when it came to distributing tickets, they bring in someone from outside," Singh said in his letter.
He has claimed that if BJP had preferred to award the ticket to any party worker he wouldn't have had a problem.
Kashmira Singh's resignation letter | X
Elections will be held in three phases in Jammu and Kashmir (September 18, 25 and October 1). There are in all 90 seats in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly. Out of these, seven seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) and 9 seats are reserved for Scheduled Tribes (ST).
Although, abrogation of Article 370 turned the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir into a union territory, the existence of legislative assembly was maintained.
