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| Ailing Farooq unable to run NC's poll campaign in 2014 | | | Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Aug 26: Like his father Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in 1977, National Conference's 78-year-old President Dr Farooq Abdullah would not be able to run his party's campaign due to illness in the forthcoming Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir. However, unlike Sher-e-Kashmir, Farooq would not be a contesting candidate this time around.
"Definitely this is going to be our biggest loss as Farooq Sahab is an unmatched crowd-puller. He alone in the family has an unparalleled capacity to intermingle with the common people, crack with them jokes in their mother tongue Kashmiri and deliver speeches with full amount of confidence. Inspite of his fluctuating graph of popularity and being dogged by controversies like the so-called Cricket Funds Scam, he continues to be a man of appeal with the Kashmiris", said a senior National Conference leader and a Minister in Omar Abdullah's Cabinet.
Currently under an informal medical treatment in London, Dr Abdullah is likely to be shifted to Singapore for a renal transplant next month.
As the responsibility of the election campaign devolves on the NC's acting President and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, the ruling party's crisis managers are obviously upset over the "king's absence". In 1977, the Youth Federation Young Turks Ali Mohammad Sagar and Mubarak Gul scripted an effective campaign for the Shikh and his NC against all odds.
Even as all of the Sheikh dynasty's political rivals, with the two-odd exceptions of Jamaat-e-Islami and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed- Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq, Maulana Mohammad Sayeed Masoodi, Ghulam Mohiuddin Karra, Prem Nath Bazaz, Abdul Gani Lone, Maulvi Iftikhar Ansari, Aga Syed Hassan, Ghulam Nabi Kochak- had joined hands with the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai's Janata Party to demolish the NC, Sheikh's party swept the polls in Kashmir.
Only two of the JP's candidates- Mirwaiz-backed Abdul Rashid Kabli (Eidgah) and the Congress rebel Abdul Gani Lone (Handwara) - were returned at the hustings.
"Unlike Sheikh Sahab, Dr Abdullah has no charismatic campaigners in the party. Be that Sagar's son Salman, Mubarak Gul's son Yunus, Tanvir Sadiq, Junaid Matoo or Yawar Masoodi, none of our youth leaders has the potential of running an election campaign. They are all born with a silver spoon in their mouth. People call them SRO-43 lot [matching them to the people who get government jobs by default on their father's killing in a militancy-related incident]", another NC leader, who served a term as Lok Sabha member, said.
Interestingly, if the party's Chief Ministerial candidate Omar Abdullah decided to contest from Sonwar, it would be for the first time since 1975 that the NC would have none from the Sheikh dynasty contesting from Ganderbal. In 1975, Congress leader Mohammad Maqbool Bhat cleared out for Sheikh Abdullah's thumping victory in Ganderbal. Shiekh was subsequently returned from Ganderbal in 1977 with equal enthusiasm. In 1983, 1987 and 1996, Farooq retained the seat with impressive victory margins. Even as the NC's new Chief Ministerial candidate Omar Abdullah, months after he was crowned as the party President amid live playing of the party's anthem at Sonwar, lost to PDP's Qazi Afzal in 2002, he won it back in 2008.
Hostile vibrations within have already begun to spring as a poll-time trouble for Omar Abdullah. His uncle Dr Mustafa Kamaal, who never reconciled to his exclusion from the Cabinet in the last six years, has already made it public that he would be contesting from nowhere other than his traditional base of Tangmarg. On the other hand, retired Deputy Commissioner of Ganderbal, Showkat Ahmad Mir, has also gone public with his caveat. According to him, his one-time mentor Dr Kamaal, who adopted him as his private secretary in 1987, would cut a sorry figure. Mir has claimed through a statement that he alone was the winning candidate in Tangmarg though many of the voters insist that incumbent Ghulam Hassan Mir followed by PDP's Mohammad Abbas were the first two potential candidates.
Those who challenged the NC top brass' authority recently include the defeated Lok Sabha candidate Dr Mehboob Beg. Rajya Sabha member Ghulam Nabi Rattanpuri has become famous for his hatred for Omar and his party in the last 6 years, though he seems to have buried the hatchet for a purpose now. Former Lok Sabha member from North Kashmir Abdul Rashid Shaheen has deserted the NC this week and joined Begum Khalida Shah's Awami National Conference.
It remains to be seen how Omar Abdullah would cope with the "rebellion within" which, like in other parties, would show up fiercely during distribution of the tickets. As of now, Nasir Aslam Wani's announcement that the NC would declare a list of the candidates on August 24 has not come true. |
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