Mohali Resident Becomes First Outsider to Contest Lok Sabha Poll in J&K Post Article 370 Abrogation

Punjab resident Baldev Kumar has become the first person from outside J&K to contest Lok Sabha polls in the UT after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. Kumar (67), a resident of the Naya Gaon area of Mohali in Punjab, filed his nomination papers from the Anantnag-Rajouri parliamentary constituency as an independent candidate on Friday. He is among 25 candidates from the constituency that will go to polls on May 7.

Kumar claimed that he decided to contest the polls on the insistence of a “large” number of local people whom he has “served for the last 20 years”. “I worked during the 2014 floods, sponsored education of several students, facilitated patients from Kashmir when they go to Punjab for medical check-ups and kept a house for them where they can stay when they go there for treatment,” Kumar said.

The contestant said he had been requesting the administration to build a ‘Kashmir Bhawan’ in Punjab, especially for the patients, but to no avail. “(Activist) Medha Patkar got 20 acres of land for her NGO from the Gujarat government but I have not been allotted even two acres for a Kashmir Bhawan for the patients from Jammu and Kashmir. The people have told me that I have to be in power and only then can I build a Kashmir Bhawan. So, I decided to contest the polls,” he said.

Asked if he has J&K’s domicile certificate, he said, “I have no domicile as I have not stayed in one place.” In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, NCR resident Shams Khwaja contested but lost the polls from the erstwhile Anantnag parliamentary constituency.

He was the first-ever non-resident to contest the polls in Jammu and Kashmir. Objections were raised against his candidature, but those were overruled by election authorities in 2019.