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| Manifestation Of Anger Against Congress | | Kamaal snubs Omar, says talks about pre-poll alliance premature | | Neha
JAMMU, Nov 24: The uncouth, blunt and provocative NC additional general secretary, Sheikh Mustafa Kamaal, has done it again. This time he has taken on his nephew, working president of the party and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and snubbed him using very strong language for his Thursday Bandipora statement that the NC and Congress will forge pre-poll alliance and contest the 2014 assembly elections jointly. Addressing party workers at Bandipora, Omar Abdullah said that had the NC and the Congress contested the 2008 Assembly elections in 2008, they would have inflicted a crushing defeat on the PDP and the political scenario of the state today would have been altogether different. His statement had left none in any doubt that Omar Abdullah considered the PDP as the NC's number one political foe in the Kashmir Valley and that the working president of the NC had come to the conclusion that if the PDP was to be defeated, his outfit and the Congress party will have to contest the next Assembly elections together. Omar Abdullah acknowledged that the PDP was a force to reckon with.
The sharp reactions which the Chief Minister's statement yesterday evoked from Congress leader and Health Minister Sham Lal Sharma and his uncle Mustafa Kamaal cleared the air and established that Omar Abdullah had not taken on board the likes of Mustafa Kamaal and the local Congress leadership before making an announcement, which was unambiguous by any standard. Omar Abdullah is well-known for making unilateral policy statements. Take, for example, what he said in Srinagar in October 2011 just a few days before the Darbar offices moved over to Jammu. He had sprung a big surprise and dumb-founded the local Congress leaders, especially JKPCC president Saif-ud-Din Soz, by making a unilateral announcement that he would revoke the AFSPA before the Darbar offices reopened in Jammu - announcement that had caused political explosions in the Congress camp in the state as well as national capital, New Delhi.
That Omar Abdullah had not taken into confidence his uncle and other leaders of his party as well as the JKPCC president or the Congress high command could be seen from the very strong statements issued by Kamaal and Sham Lal Sharma. Lambasting Omar Abdullah for his pre-poll alliance suggestion, Kamaal virtually said that he violated the constitution of the NC by suggesting what he suggested and that there was no question of forging an alliance with the Congress at this point. He said it was for the working committee and other apex bodies of the party which had the power to take any such decision and that what Omar Abdullah said was "premature", his "personal view and not the party view". What Kamaal said could also be easily construed as a manifestation of his contempt for the Congress party. Kamaal is one of the bitterest critics of the Congress and New Delhi.
As for Sham Lal sharma, who is very close to the JKPCC president, he also took on Omar Abdullah and snubbed him saying nobody had given him the mandate to speak on behalf of the Congress party. "The Congress is the largest party of India having its own history of over 150 years (127 years), which is known to everyone. The Congress takes its decisions on its own. No one can force its decisions on behalf of the state Congress," he was quoted as saying.
It is clear from what Kamaal and Sharma said that the suggestion of pre-poll alliance between the NC and the Congress is unlikely to be endorsed both by the Congress party and the bulk of NC leaders and cadres. The reasons are not difficult to fathom.
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