Now, rescheduling their visit to Jammu and Kashmir, Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge are set to arrive in Srinagar on Tuesday.
According to the original plan, they were to visit Jammu first.
This will be the first visit of the leader to the Union Territory after becoming LoP.
After holding meetings with senior NC leaders in Srinagar, Rahul Gandhi and Kharge will visit Jammu and hold deliberations with local Congress leaders to finalize issues regarding the Legislative Assembly elections in the union territory.
"He will discuss seat-sharing formula with the NC leaders here while the pre-poll alliance is almost final," Congress sources said.
Rahul Gandhi will also confer with Pradesh Congress Committee leaders to finalize the seat-sharing arrangement.
However, NC president Dr. Farooq Abdullah has recently stated that there will be no pre-poll alliance with any political party and the NC is confident of securing a majority in the 90-member J&K Assembly independently.
For the Lok Sabha elections, Congress and the NC had a poll alliance with two seats going to Congress from Jammu division and the lone seat from Ladakh and three for NC in Kashmir.
In Ladakh, the voters favored an NC rebel more than the BJP and Congress candidates.
In Kashmir, however, the voters selected NC for both the Srinagar as well as the Anantnag-Rajouri seats. Also, an independent candidate, Engineer Rashid, took the better of the party Vice President and former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah from the Baramulla Lok Sabha seat.
J&K has been without an elected government since June 2018, when the BJP withdrew from the Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP-BJP coalition government. The State came under Governor's rule after the then Governor Satya Pal Malik dissolved the State Assembly.
On August 5, 2019, Article 370 was abrogated, and J&K was divided into two Union Territories: J&K and Ladakh.
Against this, now the ECI has announced plans for a 3-phased Assembly election in J&K after the overwhelming participative Lok Sabha election.
The first phase will be on September 18, the second on September 28, and the third on October 1.
Counting of votes will take place on October 4, and the entire exercise would be concluded essentially by October 6.
Read also| Acharya Pramod Krishnam Questions Rahul Gandhi's Absence from Ayodhya and Kolkata Visits
Read also| BJP Picks Manan Mishra as Rajya Sabha Candidate from Bihar
