Jammu and Kashmir Congress Gets New Chief: Karra to Lead Party in Upcoming Polls
A few hours after the Election Commission announced schedule for assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, the Congress high command appointed its senior leader Tariq Hameed Karra from Kashmir its new party president replacing Vikar Rasool Wani in the Union Territory.
At the same time, without losing focus of Jammu region, it appointed former Deputy Chief Minister and a Dalit leader, Tara Chand, working president in addition to the already existing Raman Bhalla, a former revenue minister.
According to a statement issued by K C Venugopal, MP and party general secretary, the appointments have been made by the Congress president.
It said that Vikar Rasool has been appointed as special invitee to the Congress Working Committee with immediate effect.
Karra in view of his appointment at president of the J&K Pradesh Congress Committee stands relieved from his current position as permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee.
The move assumes significance as it indicates Congress plans to contest with equal vigour in both Kashmir Valley and Jammu region during the coming assembly elections.
Tariq Hameed Karra who had been former finance minister of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir State during PDP-Congress coalition government had in 2014 won the Lok Sabha election from Srinagar by a margin of over 40,000 votes from National Conference’s Dr Farooq Abdullah thus giving the first ever electoral defeat to the veteran politician in four decades in Kashmir.
A fierce critic of the BJP-PDP alliance from the very beginning, he had resigned from the Lok Sabha and PDP, of which he was a founding member as a mark of protest against civilian killings in September 2016. He joined Congress in February 2017 and became the first person from Kashmir to be nominated as permanent invitee to the all powerful Congress Working Committee.
Tara Chand, who served as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 2002-09 and thereafter as Deputy Chief Minister of the erstwhile state from 2009-14, had been elected thrice as MLA from Chhamb assembly constituency.
In 1996, he was the only Congress candidate to get elected to the legislative assembly from Jammu district.
Raman Bhalla, another working president too is a popular leader in Jammu. In the recently held Lok Sabha election, he had lost the electoral battle by a margin of nearly 1 lakh votes to BJP’s Jugal Kishore.
