Former BJP leader to contest LS polls from both seats of Jammu

Dogra Swabhimaan Sangathan (DSS) founder Choudhary Lal Singh on Saturday accepted a proposal of his party to contest both the Lok Sabha seats from Jammu region.

"Singh accepted the proposal (to fight the elections from both Jammu and Udhampur parliamentary constituencies) at a high-level meeting of the party leaders here," a spokesperson of the DSS said.

He said the DSS decided to contest both the seats of the Jammu province and the leadership was unanimous to field Singh from both the seats.

Singh, a former BJP leader, launched the DSS on July 22 last year to mark 100 days of his campaign in support of the demand for a CBI probe into the Kathua rape and murder case.

Singh had twice won Udhampur parliamentary seat on the Congress ticket in 2004 and 2009 before switching over to the BJP in 2014 after the party denied him a ticket from his Basholi assembly constituency despite representing the seat on previous occasions in 1996 and 2002. He won the seat for the BJP in 2014.

Singh and his colleague Chander Prakash Ganga (BJP) resigned from the previous PDP-BJP government on April 13 last year over their participation in a rally allegedly in support of the accused arrested by police in connection with the rape and murder case.

"The people of Jammu are struggling for a CBI inquiry for the last one year and both the governments at the state and the Centre are deaf and dumb for the people of Jammu. The nationalist voices of Jammu are choked only at the cost of the appeasement of the Kashmiri people," the DSS leader said at the meeting.

Singh kick-started his party's campaign from Kathua district on March 14 .