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Omar raking up AFSPA issue to counter PDP | In search of issues | | Rustam Jammu, July 30: Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who virtually controls the defeated and "unpopular" National Conference (NC), has no impressive report card to present to the people to win them over and check the fast-growing influence of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), particularly in Kashmir that returns 46 members to the 87-member Assembly. Since his Government has utterly failed to deliver on any front and since the people have abandoned it, he is trying his level best to find some issues which could help him put up a good show in the upcoming Assembly elections in the state, but with no result. In the Lok Sabha election, the NC could not lead even in 10 Assembly segments in Kashmir, including the segments Omar Abdullah and his uncle Mustafa Kamaal had been representing since January 2009. Of course, Omar Abdullah has been from time to time raking up the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) issue and attacking the Central Government hoping he would be able to impress the people and weaken the PDP in the Kashmir valley. Actually he attacks the PDP when he questions the stand of the Central Government on AFSPA. He simply strives to make the people of Kashmir believe that it was Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who as Union Home Minister applied AFSPA to the state and that it is the PDP which is responsible for the alleged human violations in Kashmir. Even this strategy of Omar Abdullah has failed to click and this is evident from the great victory of the PDP in the Lok Sabha elections. The fact is that Omar Abdullah is simply playing a dangerous game calculated to restore the political space the NC has lost over the period to the PDP in the Valley and enable NC to win a respectable number of Assembly seats but has achieved no success. Omar Abdullah's other problem is that he is not getting any new ally to upset the applecart of the PDP, which has become a very strong force in the Valley by taking a more radical stand on J&K, as also be successfully exposing the "misdeeds" and acts of omission and commission committed by the ruling coalition comprising the NC and the Congress during the past five and a half years. On the contrary, even the Congress, which is also at the receiving end, has abandoned him. It is part of the Government but has decided to go alone in the Assembly elections, thus upsetting the NC's applecart. Apart from talking in terms status of nation state for Kashmir, the PDP leadership has been consistently attacking the NC leaders, especially Omar Abdullah and his father and party president Farooq Abdullah. Patron of the PDP Mufti Sayeed and his daughter and party president Mehbooba Mufti (MP) have been quite successful in making bulk of Kashmiri Muslims believe that it is the NC which is squarely responsible for "political uncertainty, development-deficit, unfulfilled aspirations, mounting unemployment and corruption" and that PDP is the only party that end misrule of the NC and come up to their expectations. Reports emanating from the Valley at regular intervals clearly suggest that Omar Abdullah and members of his kitchen cabinet are just incapable of turning tables on the PDP, which has meticulously evolved an election strategy that could help it create a history in the electoral history of Kashmir. It would not be surprising if the PDP wins 25 to 30 seats in the Kashmir valley alone and the NC fails to reach double-digit figure. Omar Abdullah would do well to remember that negative politics never benefits parties; they meet the fate it and the parties like the Congress, SP, BSP, RJD, JDU, DMK, NCP, RLD and so on met in the Lok Sabha election. |
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