In a major setback, the National Conference (NC) on Monday faced mass resignation of its functionaries from its Kargil unit after the party chief Dr Farooq Abdullah directed them to support the Congress candidate Tsering Namgyal, who is a Buddhist, for the lone Lok Sabha seat of Ladakh that will go to polls on 20 May.

Defying Abdullah’s directive, a large section of the Kargil unit of the NC has announced its support to their leader Hanifa Jan, a Shia Muslim, who has filed his nomination as an independent.

Jan filing his papers independently, had created doubts on the intentions of the NC leadership that had announced to support the Congress candidate for the Ladakh seat.

The NC posted on X the directive of Abdullah that said; “NC President Dr Farooq Abdullah has directed the Kargil unit of the party to support the INDIA bloc candidate T Namgyal in the Lok Sabha election for the Ladakh seat. He has told his colleagues that failure to follow his directive will be seen as a serious breach of party discipline”.

Qamar Ali Akhoon, additional secretary of the NC, shot back a letter to Abdullah saying; “In the interest of the Ladakh region as a whole and in order to secure the future of our region, the Ladakh Democratic Alliance has unitedly decided to project a joint candidate namely Mohammad Haneefa Jan as independent candidate….supported by all political and religious institutions unanimously”.

Akhoon mentioned in the letter that “the party high command is pressurising us both telephonically as well as on social media to support the official candidate of the Congress which is unacceptable to us, including the NC and Congress units of Kargil”.

”As the party insists that we act against the interests of the people of Ladakh, so we are compelled to resign en-mass from the party and all party posts,” Akhoon added and asked Abdullah to treat this letter as a mass resignation.

It is worth mentioning that annoyance was simmering particularly in the Kargil unit of the NC after the party leadership announced its support to the Congress candidate on the seat.

Presence of Jan in the poll arena is likely to upset the poll calculations of the Congress and the BJP.