By IANS,
Srinagar : Octogenarian Congress leader and former MP Ghulam Rasool Kar Tuesday decided to fight the coming Kashmir elections as an independent candidate after his request for a party nomination was turned down by the party high command.
Kar, the senior most Congress leader in the state, was a minister in the 1960s and early 1970s in the then Congress government headed by Ghulam Muhammad Sadiq.
“Kar has decided to contest elections from his north Kashmir Sopore home constituency as an independent candidate,” sources close to him told IANS.
The former president of the state Congress was elected to the 11th Lok Sabha in 1996 from the Baramulla constituency.
The Congress has fielded Abdul Rashid Dar from Sopore, which he won in the 2002 elections.
Sopore is believed to be a stronghold of senior separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani.