Jammu, Nov 30: Three newly elected National Conference (NC) Members of Parliament (MPs) Chowdry Muhammad Ramzan, Sajjad Ahmed Kichloo and Shammi Oberoi will take oath as Rajya Sabha (RS) members from Jammu and Kashmir tomorrow, December 1, 2025.
Winter session of the Parliament, which is commencing from December 1, will continue till December 19, 2025.
NC MPs will be administered oath of office by the Vice President and Rajya Sabha chairman C P Radhakrishnan.
The trio was among four members elected in the biennial elections to four vacant seats in the Council of States (Rajya Sabha), from Union Territory (UT) of Jammu and Kashmir on October 24 this year.
Fourth seat was won by Bharatiya Janata Party’s J&K president Sat Sharma. Sharma has already taken oath of office on November 6.
With the presence of four newly elected MPs, the Union Territory will have its five members, three from NC and two from BJP, in the Rajya Sabha.
BJP MP Gulam Ali Khatana is the nominated member in the House of Elders.
In all, J&K is represented by 10 MPs in the Parliament as Lok Sabha too has five MPs from the UT – two each from NC (Mian Altaf, Aga Syed Ruhullah) and BJP (Dr Jitendra Singh, Jugal Kishore Sharma) and one independent Engineer Rashid.
From NC, while both Ramzan and Kichloo are seasoned politicians and former ministers, Oberoi is a first-timer.
Ramzan has represented the NC in J&K Legislative Assembly four times from Handwara in 1983, 1987, 1996 and then again in 2008.
Kichloo has served as an NC MLA twice from Kishtwar in 2002 and 2008 and as MLC in J&K Legislative Council in 2015.
Interestingly, Oberoi is commencing his sojourn in politics from the House of Elders of the Parliament.
BJP’s Sat Sharma, a former minister, is also an experienced hand. Presently J&K BJP president, Sat Sharma contested the 2014 assembly elections from Jammu West and served as a cabinet minister till April 2018.
Sharma, a staunch RSS ideologue and Chartered Accountant by profession, earlier also served as J&K BJP chief from 2015 to 2018.
Given their entry in the RS, J&K will be represented by its full strength of MPs in the Upper House of the Parliament, after a hiatus of over four years.
These seats had been lying vacant since 2021 when the term of office of 4 members elected from erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir expired on their retirement.
These members included Mir Mohammad Fayaz, Shamsher Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Nazir Ahmed Laway.
Mir Mohammad Fayaz of PDP and Shamsher Singh of BJP had retired on February 10, 2021 followed by Ghulam Nabi Azad of Congress and Nazir Ahmed Laway (elected as PDP candidate) on February 15, 2021.
However, the elections to these vacant seats could not be conducted due to non-availability of required electorate (Members of J&K Legislative Assembly) at the time of occurrence of those vacancies.
