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| CM accepts defeat even before 2014 Assembly elections | | Pre-Poll NC-Cong Alliance? | | Neha
JAMMU, Nov 23: Chief Minister Omar Abdullah yesterday accepted defeat even before contesting the 2014 Assembly elections and announced that the National Conference (NC) and the Congress will context the next assembly elections jointly. He made this announcement while addressing party workers at Bandipora (Kashmir). It is still not clear if the Chief Minister, who also happens to be the working president of the NC, took the Congress high command and the state Congress leadership into confidence before making the announcement.
It is difficult to believe that the local Congress leadership would endorse the Chief Minister's suggestion. For, an overwhelming majority of Congress leaders and workers do not want to keep any kind of truck with the NC leadership. It is particularly true of the Congress leaders and workers belonging to Jammu Pradesh whose aspirations and needs are altogether different from those of Kashmir. As for Kashmir, the Congress leadership can endorse the Chief Minister's suggestion because the support-base of the Congress party in the Valley is rather limited. It is confined to three or four assembly constituencies. As far as Ladakh is concerned, the Congress leadership will not enter into an alliance with the NC in Leh district where the Congress and Ladakh Union Territory Front are in full command. The compulsions and aspirations of the people of Leh district are similar to those of the people of Jammu Pradesh. In Kargil district, the Congress has little presence. The NC has its support-base in this district.
It is not important whether the Chief Minister's proposal would be accepted or rejected. What is important is the fact that the Chief Minister has accepted that his party's support-base has considerably dwindled across the state in general and the Kashmir Valley in particular and that the NC no more could be described as a state-level party. It is also clear from his statement that the fast growing influence of the PDP in the Valley and the significant presence of the non-NC formations in Jammu Pradesh have rattled the NC leadership. How else should one interpret the announcement of the working president of a party which not-so-long ago ruled the roost in the state and represented itself as the sole representative of the people of the state? It is a fact that the NC till the other day used to say that it is the sole factor in the state's political situation and that it is the NC which represents the aspirations of the entire population of Jammu & Kashmir.
That it was none other than the NC working president, who himself is a bitter critic of the local Congress leadership as well as New Delhi, who toyed with the idea of forging a pre-poll alliance with the Congress party should clinch the whole issue and establish that the NC barrage is slowly but surely drifting towards the rock. The statement of party president Farooq Abdullah that there are enemies within the party who are conspiring against the NC is another indication that its supporters are deserting the party and looking towards other formations, especially the PDP.
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