Udhampur seat candidates no strangers to controversy

Arjun Sharma

Jammu, April 1

The two main contestants, Choudhary Lal Singh and GM Saroori, fighting the Lok Sabha elections against incumbent Member Parliament and Union Minister Jitendra Singh from Udhampur, have a tryst with controversies.

Congress candidate and former minister Lal Singh is a rolling stone in politics and has changed multiple political parties whenever he found ‘greener pastures’ while former minister GM Saroori, who is the candidate of the Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP), is a confidant of former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and a popular leader in Kishtwar and Doda districts.

Lal Singh was arrested by the ED in a case of money laundering in November last year after an investigation pointed to discrepancies in the record of an educational trust run by his wife, Kanta Andotra.

Lal Singh took part in a protest demanding a CBI probe into the infamous Rassana rape and murder of a minor Muslim girl, where he supported the accused in 2018. The issue invited condemnation from across the country.

During his tenure as a health minister, he was criticised when he was caught on camera touching a woman doctor inappropriately at a hospital in Kathua. Another woman doctor had alleged mental harassment against Singh.

Meanwhile, GM Saroori, who was a minister in the Congress-NC government in 2010, was accused of hiring an impersonator to write a medical entrance exam for his daughter.

In February 2020, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) summoned Saroori in connection with an investigation into a terror-related case.

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