| In 2014 also, NC, Congress had forged pre-poll alliance | | 2019 Lok Sabha elections | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Mar 15: The 2019 general elections in the country, including J&K, are very crucial for the ruling party, the BJP, and the opposition parties, including the Congress. The BJP hopes that it would again make it to the Lok Sabha and reestablish its government with Narendra Modi as the PM. The opposition parties across the country have been trying hard to forge a united front against the BJP. Their one-point agenda is to dethrone PM Narendra Modi.
In J&K, the situation is no different. On the one hand, the PDP chief, Mehbooba Mufti, who has been feeling the heat, has declared that she is ready to forge pre-poll alliance with any political party and that her mission is to ensure the defeat of the BJP, "which ditched her and Kashmir", the NC and the Congress have been holding parleys calculated to forge a pre-poll alliance so that the BJP was defeated.
According to sources, the Congress wants to contest all the three Lok Sabha seats in Jammu and Ladakh - two in Jammu (Jammu-Poonch and Kathua, Udhampur-Doda and the lone Ladakh seat). In 2014 also, the Congress had also fielded its candidates in Jammu and Ladakh, but failed to win even a single seat. Not only this, the Congress could get only about 10 per cent of the votes polled. These votes included votes of the NC. The BJP had won the Jammu seats with a huge margin and won the Ladakh seat for the first time by a slender margin of 36 votes. The BJP had polled 32.5 per cent of the totals votes polled, the highest-ever poll percentage of the BJP in the state where it was considered a non-player.
However, the NC, which has reportedly told the Congress that it will not forge any alliance with it for the assembly elections, is wiling to earmark only two seats for the Congress, one each in Jammu (Kathua-Udhampur-Doda seat) and Ladakh seat. The NC has already announced its candidate - BR Kundal, former J&K Chief Secretary, for the Jammu-Poonch Lok Sabha seat.
The NC, which had forged pre-poll alliance with the Congress in 2014 for the Lok Sabha elections, had fielded all its three candidates in Kashmir and had got only 11 per cent of the total votes polled, which also included the Congress votes. It, like the Congress, had failed to win even one of the three Lok Sabha seats it contested in the Valley. So much so, Farooq Abdullah failed to make it to the Lok Sabha. It was the PDP which won all the three seats.
The situation in 2019 is not very different from that of 2014. In 2014, it was Narendra Modi Vs all and in 2019, again it is Narendra Modi Vs all. In fact, the 100 per cent successful surgical strikes on February 26 across LoC at Muzaffarabad and Chakoti and deep-inside Pakistan at Balakot have changed the whole political scenario in the country. It would be interesting to see if the NC-Congress combine turn tables on the BJP or not. |
|
