PDP holds meet in Jammu with focus on next assembly polls in J&K

Jammu, Jun 22 (PTI) Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured the people about holding of the assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) held a meeting here on Saturday to chalk out its action plan in preparation for the much awaited democratic exercise.

The meeting, chaired by PDP vice-president Abdul Hameed Choudhary at Gandhi Nagar party headquarters, was primarily convened to gear up and strengthen the party cadres in Jammu region ahead of the assembly elections, party spokesperson Variender Singh Sonu told PTI.

He said PDP general secretary Amrik Singh Reen, party additional general secretary Satpal Singh Charak, Jammu women wing president Surjit Kaur, district president Jammu Sohit Sharma and senior leaders Vijaya Dogra, Choudhary Chuni Lal and K K Sharma among others attended the meeting.

The meeting discussed in detail the party’s preparations for the upcoming assembly elections and the action plan to strengthen the party at the grass-roots level across the Jammu region, the spokesperson said.

The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is presently run by Lt Governor-led administration after the PDP-BJP government collapsed in June, 2018 with the national party pulling out of the alliance. The last assembly elections were held in 2014.

In his first visit to the valley on June 20 and 21 after becoming the prime minister for the third consecutive term, Modi had said the assembly elections would be held soon in Jammu and Kashmir and plans are underway to restore statehood to the Union Territory in the near future.

In his address at a gathering at SKICC ‘Empowering Youth, Transforming J&K’, he commended the people for their active participation in the Lok Sabha elections and expressed the need for them to choose their local leaders through the upcoming assembly elections.

“The people of Jammu and Kashmir participated in Lok Sabha elections in large numbers and broke the record of the past 35 years. You deserve to be felicitated for it… Now time has come that people of Jammu and Kashmir chose their own local representatives. For that, preparations are being made for holding assembly elections,” he said.