Sham Lal Sharma And His Appeal For A Dogra CM (image: x.com/ShamSharma_JK/)

The final phase of polls witnessed a candidate’s appeal for a Dogra Chief Minister from Jammu and Kashmir. In election campaigns, senior BJP leader and Jammu North candidate Sham Lal Sharma appealed to voters in the Jammu division to elect party’s candidates so that the Union Territory will have a Dogra Hindu Chief Minister, first in history.  He currently  serves as the vice president of the Jammu and Kashmir BJP unit.

“It has been a decades-old dream of the people of Jammu to have a Hindu Chief Minister, and now is the time to make that a reality,” Daily Excelsior quotes, as Sharma is saying.

During the public meetings, Sharma stated that there is a strong wave of support for the BJP in the region suggesting the party victory in the Assembly polls.

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“It is now or never to make a Dogra Hindu Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. If a Muslim can be the CM of Maharashtra (A R Antulay) despite having just a small population, why can’t a Hindu be the CM in J&K? We have a 32% population here,” Indian Express quotes, as he is saying.

Sharma, who had initially belonged to Congress, quit the party in 2018 and joined the BJP in 2019, just a few days ahead of the first phase of Lok Sabha polls. He had held the post of senior vice president of the Congress Jammu and Kashmir unit.

He has served as MLA from Akhnoor, his home constituency, and handled the ministerial portfolio in the NC-Congress coalition government in 2008. A strong voice of the Jammu region, Sharma is the younger brother of senior Congress leader and two-term legislator Madan Lal Sharma.

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However, in the 2014 Assembly polls, BJP’s Rajeev Sharma defeated Sham Lal Sharma in Akhnoor by a margin of 9380 votes.