SRINAGAR: As Omar Abdullah took the oath as Chief Minister on Wednesday, Surinder Kumar Choudhary was sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Four others also took the oath as cabinet ministers.
Omar Abdullah said, “I had said that we will not allow Jammu to feel that they do not have a voice or representatives in this government. I have chosen a deputy chief minister from Jammu so that the people of Jammu feel that this government is as much theirs as it is of the rest.”
In the recently concluded Assembly elections, Surinder Choudhary contested the Nowshera seat against four other candidates. He defeated BJP’s Ravinder Raina by a margin of 7,819 votes. The voter turnout in the Nowshera constituency was 73.05 per cent.
Surinder Choudhary on being chosen deputy CM said, “I have been allotted the Deputy CM’s portfolio which is a big responsibility on my shoulders. I will try to fulfil my responsibility to the best of my capabilities. It is very difficult to fill the vacuum of the past 10 years. I have full faith in the leadership of CM Omar Abdullah and hope to serve the people of Jammu region even though the task is full of challenges.”
In the 2014 Assembly elections, Raina won the Nowshera seat by defeating Choudhary, who was then running on a PDP ticket, by a margin of over 10,000 votes.
Choudhary resigned from the PDP in 2022 to join the BJP before ending his over-year-long association with the party to join the National Conference in July last year.
According to data from the Association of Democratic Reforms, Surinder Kumar Choudhary is a 56-year-old resident of Nowshera, Jammu and Kashmir. He is a 12th-grade pass candidate with total assets of two crores. He has no declared criminal cases against him and is a former member of the Legislative Council.
He was previously a member of both the PDP and the BJP.
