Six PDP Nominees File Papers for Kashmir Council Polls

Jammu, Feb 18 (IANS) Six Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidates Wednesday filed papers for the legislative council elections in Jammu and Kashmir.

After fighting the Rajya Sabha elections jointly, the PDP and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which are in talks to form a government, are also fighting the elections for the 11 legislative council seats jointly.

The 87-member state legislative assembly forms the electoral college for the state legislative council which is the upper house of the bicameral legislature in the state.

To give the PDP-BJP combine a fight in these elections, the National Conference (NC) and the Congress have also joined hands.

The Congress has decided it would not field candidates in these elections and would instead support those fielded by the NC.

The PDP has 28, the BJP 25, the NC 15 and the Congress 12 members in the assembly, while there are seven independent members.

The six PDP candidates who filed papers for the polls are Surinder Choudhary and Firdous Tak for Jammu seats, Anayat Ali for reserved seat of Kargil and Javed Ahmed Mirchal, Saifuddin Bhat and Yasir Reshi for Kashmir province seats.

The five BJP candidates for these elections are likely to file papers in a d ay or two.

Voting will be held at the state legislature complex here March 2.