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| Exit polls | | Omar sitting on the ruins of NC | | Rustam
Early Times Report
JAMMU, Dec 21: Elections to the JK Legislative Assembly are over. Several news channels and pollsters have also come out with their predictions. All this happened on Saturday with the completion of the fifth and the final phase of election in the sensitive border state, which consists of three distinct regions and houses a highly diverse population.
All the exit polls predicted a hung assembly in the state and suggested that the PDP would emerge as the single largest party to be followed by the BJP. Both the parties could share between them over 60 seats in the 87-member House. The NC, according to all the exit polls, is likely to finish third and the Congress to get fourth position. One exit poll suggested that both the NC and Congress would be evenly placed; they could win 9 to 14 seats each. In other words, they are competing for the third and fourth position.
The predictions were on expected lines. It was also expected that the NC would suffer the worst ever defeat in its long electoral history and might become a marginal political force even in the Kashmir Valley. In fact, this precisely was what the pollsters on Saturday predicted. Of course, they didn't say that the outgoing Chief Minister and working president of the ruling NC, Omar Abdullah, was sitting on the ruins of the Kashmir's premier political organization with a sectarian and secessionist agenda, but they actually meant that. And what they predicted was what the keen NC-watchers had been saying for years now.
The objective NC-watchers had been saying since years that Omar Abdullah would destroy the NC and reduce it to the status of a marginal political group incapable of playing any important role in the Kashmiri's political arena. It was in 2002 that NC president Farooq Abdullah handed over the NC to his son Omar Abdullah hoping that he would carry forward the legacy of the Abdullah dynasty, but it didn't happen. What happened was to the contrary. Omar Abdullah behaved in a fashion that annoyed the old guards in the party and drove the party cadres away from it. The first election that Omar Abdullah led from the front was in 2002 itself and the result was not inspiring for the party. The NC could win only 28 seats. Omar Abdullah himself lost the election. In 1996, the NC under the leadership of Farooq Abdullah had won 57 seats and created a history of sorts by winning so many seats, including four in Jammu district alone.
It was hoped that Omar Abdullah would learn lesson from the ignominious defeat and change his style of working taking into consideration the ground realities in the state. It was also hoped that the NC would playing the role of an effective and responsible opposition between 2002 and 2008 and restore the ground it lost over the period. Again, this didn't happen. He wasted the opportunity and the result was that his party couldn't improve its position even in the 2008 assembly elections. It again won 28 seats. He became Chief Minister with the support of the Congress (read Rahul Gandhi).
He had failed to rejuvenate his party as its top leader and he failed the people of state as Chief Minister.
Instead of focusing on matters of governance or handing down a responsive, accountable, transparent, corruption-free administration, he consistently indulged in rabble-rousing and India-bashing to divert the people's attention away from the real issues facing them and the state and the result was that he became unpopular with each passing day. He had a kitchen cabinet which consisted of rank opportunists, corrupt elements and persons with doubtful credentials, who misguided him and made his position untenable.
And if the NC is performing so poorly in the 2014 assembly elections, Omar Abdullah has to blame himself and members of his coterie. Indeed, he has worked for his own political demises as well as the demise of the NC. No one will bemoan the decimation of the NC because its leadership systematically drove the people away from the Kashmir's premier political organization. |
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