Union Home Minister Amit Shah will preside over a Core Group meeting of the Jammu and Kashmir BJP unit tomorrow at the party headquarters in New Delhi, amid reports that elections to Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and Panchayats, as well as Lok Sabha elections early next year, may be on the agenda, in addition to other Union Territory issues.
Union Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Dr Jitendra Singh and Jugal Kishore Sharma, the two BJP MPs from the UT, Ravinder Raina, UT chief, Ashok Koul, general secretary (Organisations), Kavinder Gupta and Dr Nirmal Singh, both former Deputy Chief Ministers, Devender Singh Rana, Sunil Sethi, Sat Sharma, Devender Manyal, Sunil Sharma, Vibodh Gupta and Shakti Parihar among others have been invited to the meeting.
There may possibly be BJP national president Jagat Prakash Nadda present.
Tarun Chug, the Jammu and Kashmir Incharge for the BJP, and Ashish Sood, the co-Incharge, are both set to attend.
The meeting will take place at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi at 11 AM, according to various reports.
The Union Home Minister may also meet with Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha privately while he is in New Delhi to receive an update on the security situation, ongoing construction projects, and other aspects of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.
The meeting would be presided over by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, they added.
Elections for the municipal and panchayat levels of government must be held between October and December since those two bodies’ five-year terms are about to expire. While Panchayat elections were held on a non-party basis in 2018, the BJP performed strongly in municipal bodies in the Jammu region.
However, according to reports, some BJP officials favoured that ULB and Panchayat elections take place after the Lok Sabha election in April or May of next year so that they may concentrate on the Parliamentary elections first. In order to gauge their strength, another faction of the BJP wants the municipal and panchayat elections to be held first.
However, the J&K Government must decide whether to hold these elections after consulting with the Union Home Ministry and taking the security situation into account.
