“Neither we were and nor we are part of the BJP”, he told media persons while replying to a question whether the proximity of Apni Party with BJP had backfired during the recent Lok Sabha elections when all three candidates of the party badly lost in Kashmir.
Apni Party’s other senior leader and former minister, Choudhary Zulfikar Ali, joined the BJP on Monday.
The BJP has not fielded its candidates on any of the three Lok Sabha seats in the Kashmir valley and is supporting Apni Party on the Anantnag and Srinagar seats and the Peoples Conference chief Sajad Lone in Baramulla
Manhas was addressing a series of election rallies in the border districts of Poonch and Rajouri where Pakistan is trying hard to revive terrorism by repeatedly targeting men of the Indian Army.
Announcing the names of the candidates in a press conference in Srinagar, the chairman of the parliamentary affairs committee of the Apni Party, Dillawar Mir said Mohammad Ashraf Mir would contest the Srinagar seat while Zafar Iqbal Manhas has been fielded from Anantnag.
The Apni Party has so far not announced any candidate for any of the five parliamentary seats.
The Apni Party announced that it will contest all the five Lok Sabha seats in Jammu & Kashmir in the 2024 general election. The party’s spokesman, Raqeeq Ahmed Khan, while announcing this on Friday, also said Apni Party will not enter an electoral alliance with any other party.
The National Conference, PDP, Panthers Party, Congress, DPAP and Apni Party held the administration squarely responsible for power crisis in the Union Territory.
The women entrepreneurship needs to be encouraged in J&K with the support of the Government and banks through financial support in the shape of easy loans to start their own business, said Apni Party chief Bukhari.
The security was accorded by the Ministry of Home Affairs following a recent security review meeting based on an Intelligence Bureau threat analysis.
