SRI NAGAR: After winning the Ladakh parliamentary seat, the BJP has fielded candidates for all the four Assembly seats in Ladakh, while the ruling National Conference, which had won three of the four seats from the region in the last Assembly polls, has surprisingly decided against putting up candidates in two of the seats.
The saffron party has fielded candidates for Nubra, Leh, Kargil and Zanskar seats in the Ladakh region.
Stanzin Delik, 39, will be contesting from Nubra seat, Abdul Aziz , 63, from Kargil, Stanzin Lapka, 43, from Zanskar seat, and Chering Dorjay, 66, will be the party’s candidate from Leh constituency.
The BJP had contested only one seat, Kargil, in the 2008 polls, where its candidate Ahsan Ali could only muster a paltry 695 of the total of 42,767 votes polled.
In the 2008 Assembly polls, independent candidate Tsetan Namgyal won the Nobra seat by securing 4,608 votes, while his closest rival Tsewang Rigzin of the Congress got 3,678 votes.
Qamar Ali Akhoon of the NC, Feroz Ahmad Khan of the NC and Nawang Rigzin Jora of the Congress had won the Kargil, Zanskar and Leh seats respectively.
The NC move to leave out the Leh and Zanskar seats is all the more surprising since the sitting MLA from Zanskar is Feroz Khan, who is a minister in the outgoing NC-Congress Government.
Neither has the party renominated its sitting MLA Qamar Ali Akhoon from the Kargil constituency.
Instead the ticket has been given to Kacho Mohammad Hussain. From Nobra constituency, the National Conference has fielded Tsetan Namgyal, who had won the seat in the 2008 polls as an independent. The National Conference has also fielded Muslim candidate Abdul Aziz from Kargil, which has a Muslim population.
A state BJP leader said senior leaders of the party are likely to campaign for party candidates in the region.
Stiff contest on cards
Political observers said Ladakh would witness stiff contest between the two national parties, the Congress and the BJP, in the Buddhist-dominated belt of the region. In Leh seat, there are only two candidates -- Chering Dorjay of the BJP and Nawang Rigzin of the Congress.