SRINAGAR: BJP will be holding a legislature party meeting in Jammu on Monday to elect the opposition leader. The party emerged as the second largest party in the 90-member J&K Assembly by securing 29 seats.
BJP chief spokesman Sunil Sethi told TNIE that the BJP’s legislature party meeting would be held in Jammu on Monday. The newly elected MLAs would elect the leader of the BJP legislature party, who would be leader of the opposition.
The BJP won 29 seats in the 90-member J&K Assembly. It is the best-ever tally for the saffron party, which won all its seats from the Hindu heartland in Jammu region and drew blank from Kashmir.
It is expected that central observers would also attend BJP’s legislature party meeting. Sources said Sunil Kumar Sharma (MLA Padder Nagseni) and Devinder Rana(MLA Nagrota) are frontrunners for the post of leader of opposition.
They, however, said Sharma is reluctant to take over as J&K BJP president/Asked whether BJP would follow the Congress, which authorized its central leadership to decide its leader of legislature party, Sethi said normally this does not happen in BJP.
“The legislature party will decide their leader and he will be the leader of the opposition,” he said.
Although NC emerged as the single largest party by winning 42 seats, BJP emerged as the second largest party and has the highest vote share in the Assembly elections securing 25.64% vote share. The NC secured 23.43% vote share while Congress received 11.97% and PDP got 8.87% of votes.
With 29 members in the Assembly, the BJP is likely to give tough time to the NC-Congress coalition government to be headed by Omar Abdullah.
Omar, who was elected as NC legislature party leader, and is backed by Congress, five independents, CPI(M) and AAP, met Lt Governor Manoj Sinha on Friday evening and staked claim on government formation.
Omar is hopeful that the oath-taking ceremony would take place on Wednesday now that the over six-year-long president's rule in J&K has been revoked.
J&K has been under direct central rule since June 2018, when the then BJP-PDP coalition led by Mehbooba Mufti collapsed following withdrawal of support by BJP citing security concerns.