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| Omar not confident of victory | | Performance under scanner | | Rustam
JAMMU, Mar 20: NC working president and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is not confident of victory in the coming general elections. This became clear only the other day when he said in an interview to a correspondent of a leading English language daily that the "Lok Sabha elections are not a referendum on his Government" admitting, at the same time, that the "performance of the State Government will be part of the debate and discussions during the campaign for these polls". "The State Government's work will be a part of the elections but it is not purely a referendum on the State Government. But, it definitely will be a part of the issues during these elections. The State Government's work will have influence on the elections. The new administrative units and implementation of MGNREGA and other Centrally-Sponsored Schemes will be the issues. We are not going with a single slogan. It is not a single-slogan election," he told his interviewer when asked as to what would he put on the political market for sale.
The very fact that he said that the outcome of upcoming Lok Sabha elections will not be a referendum on the performance of his Government was virtually an admission that the NC might not repeat its 2009 performance in the Kashmir valley. In the Valley, it had inflicted a crushing defeat on the PDP and captured all the three Lok Sabha seats. The NC is contesting the Lok Sabha election from Jammu province. Its ally the Congress is contesting from both the Lok Sabha seats in Jammu province.
Of course, Omar Abdullah also asserted during the interview that his party will win all the three Lok Sabha seats from the Valley, his whole argument betrayed lack of confidence. Convinced that the performance of his Government is far from satisfactory, he thought it politically wise to take a line that he would use after the election results are out on May 16 to tell his critics that he had already said that the Lok Sabha elections and the performance of his Government were two different things and that the defeat of his party candidate/candidates will have no adverse impact on the Assembly elections as far as his party is concerned.
Omar Abdullah is not just Chief Minister. He also holds the Home portfolio and as Home Minister he knows the nature of the prevailing political situation in the Kashmir valley. He gets information from ground zero from the various intelligence agencies about the state of things. It was obvious from his interview that the picture is not that rosy for the NC in Kashmir where it is face to face with the PDP whose leadership is leaving no stone unturned to expose the NC-Congress coalition through its no-holds-barred campaigning. Remember, the constituency of the NC and the PDP in the Kashmir valley is the same and the PDP's vote share in the last Assembly election was more as compared to the NC. Things have changed in the Valley during the past more than five years. Omar Abdullah is aware of the ground situation and, hence, his attempt at finding an escape route. |
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