Ram Nath Kovind to visit Kashmir for Prez poll campaign

New Delhi: NDA presidential nominee Ram Nath Kovind will visit Jammu and Kashmir on June 28 as part of his campaign for July’s presidential election, and will meet state chief minister Mehbooba Mufti along with the ruling alliance’s MPs and MLAs, who are part of the electoral college. Mr Kovind will also meet People’s Conference’s Sajjad Lone, whose party has two MLAs. The BJP is sharing power with the PDP in the Jammu and Kashmir government. 

Mr Kovind, who launched his campaign from his home state of Uttar Pradesh on June 25, visited Uttarakhand on Monday. He met all 57 party legislators. Two out of the five party MPs from the state and one independent MLA, Pritam Singh Panwar, were also present at the meeting. BJP MPs and former chief ministers Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, B.C. Khanduri and Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank could not attend the meeting due to their personal engagements. 

During his visit to Srinagar, he will be accompnaied by Union ministers M. Venkaiah Naidu and Jitendra Singh, BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Shivpratap Shukla and national general-secretary and in-charge of the state’s affairs, Ram Madhav. 

The BJP, which is confident that the NDA candidate will win by a comfortable majority in the July 17 elections, will file the fourth set of nomination paper of Mr Kovind on July 28, the last day of filing the nomination. 

A day after his Jammu and Kashmir visit, Mr Kovind will meet BJP and SAD MPs and MLAs from Punjab and Haryana in Chandigarh. He will be accompnaied by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, BJP national general-secretary Anil Jain and Kota-Bundi MP Om Birla. 

The party also claimed that it is “very positive” of O.P. Chautala-led INLD’s support for the NDA nominee. In states like Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala, where the BJP has minimal or no strength in the state Assembly, Mr Kovind is also likely to meet their independent legislators and those who are not supporting the state government, in Chennai after June 30.