NC's Surinder Choudhary Defeats BJP Chief Ravinder Raina In Nowshera

In Nowshera assembly segment, J&K BJP Chief Ravinder Raina lost to National Conference (NC) leader Surinder Choudhary. Choudhary has secured 35,069 votes and defeated Raina by a margin of 7,819 votes.

This was for the second time, Raina and Choudhary competing against each other for an assembly seat.  As Raina was seeking his second term, he posed a tough challenge through his former party colleague.

Choudhary, a former MLC, fought elections on an alliance ticket. He left PDP in March 2022 and crossed over to BJP within a week. After a year-long association, he quit the saffron party and joined NC. Choudhary accused the Jammu and Kashmir BJP chief of encouraging familism and corruption. In response, BJP leader filed a defamation notice on Choudhary “for levelling baseless allegations” with the sole intention to defame his reputation within the party and the masses.

Nowshera, traditionally a Congress bastion, the grand old party won the seat eight consecutive terms from 1962 to 2002. In 2008, NC wrested the constituency for the first time, followed by BJP in the next polls. It is one of the coveted seats for the BJP, since it was for the first time the saffron party secured victory in the seat. In the polls, Raina secured victory with 37,374 votes. He had defeated Choudhary, then contested on a BJP ticket by a margin of 9,503 votes.

An RSS pracharak, Raina, has been serving as the Jammu and Kashmir BJP president since 2017. Known for his hardline approach, recently, Raina hit headlines as the ‘poorest’ among all candidates in the assembly polls.