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| Wrong choice of candidates : Where PDP faltered…….! | | MLC elections | |
early times report
Srinagar, Dec 6: The ruling National Conference- Congress coalition has bagged all the four reserved MLC seats to which elections were held on December 3. Ali Mohammad Dar and Shahnaz Ganai of NC and Ghulam Nabi Monga and Shyam Lal Bhagat of Congress were declared elected from K1 and J2 and K2 and J1 seats respectively.
The elections to the 4 reserved MLC seats under Panchayat quota were much politicized and it was because of this hype, the elections were termed as litmus test for both ruling coalition and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party while some observers describing these elections as the trendsetter for the 2014 general assembly elections.
The all out campaign by the ruling coalition and the opposition PDP was itself an indicator that both sides had attached much significance to these elections than they really deserved. For a while both ruling alliance and the opposition PDP forgot that politicizing such an issue will have an adverse impact on the prospects of the political parties and while ignoring the real issue of the empowerment of Panchayats in the state both the sides put their claims on an electorate which both sides had reduced to a sellable commodity soon after the elections to the Panchayats were held in 2011 after a gap of 27 years. Knowing that elected representatives of Panchayats could be influenced by anything especially when there is no evident tag on them. For, the elections to the panchayats were held on non-partisan basis.
However, the looser in the game was the opposition because it committed some serious mistakes rather blunders while jumping into the fray. At the very outset the nomination of three candidates for K2, J1 and J2 seats was absolutely drivel. Nominating a very little known and equally naïve person to the K2 seat was, in fact the first blunder of the opposition PDP. They were having many stalwarts like Aga Sayed Mehmood , former Legislative Council Chairman Ghulam Nabi Hanjoora, former ministers Ghulam Mohiuddin Sofi and Qazi Muhammad Afzal available to them and fielding one among these leaders could have given them an edge over coalition candidate Ghulam Nabi Monga.
They could not take on board some important political heavy weights like M Y Tarigami, Hakim Muhammad Yasin, Er Rashid and others who really matter. It was essentially required to garner support of "like minded" because as per Mufti Muhammad Sayed's own assertions, 'politics is the art of possibilities' but unfortunately they could not make use of this art.
Fielding two candidates from Jammu district for J1 and J2 was again a bigger mistake the main opposition committed. It was essentially required that the candidates should have been nominated from Poonch, Rajouri and erstwhile Doda district or even from erstwhile Kathua district but that did not happen, instead PDP nominated candidates from Jammu (rural) where party has very little presence on one hand and on the other hand coalition was united in the district leaving little scope for the opposition to garner support of panchs and sarpanchs of the area.
Immaterial whether election results will have an impact on the 2014 election or not, the opposition PDP has to learn some lessons from its mistakes.
One, given the fact that coalition politics is to stay there for some more time, PDP shall have to forge a broad based friendship with potential individuals and parties.
Second, PDP could not afford an all time animosity with the local congress leadership. And last but not the least, the opposition will have to be very careful in selection of candidates because what was more shocking for the party today than the outcome of the MLC elections was that the ruling alliance registered its lead from a number of such constituencies which are currently represented by PDP which essentially suggests that anti-incumbency is not something that haunts ruling coalition but in many constituencies it is the opposition legislators currently represented them in the J&K legislature.
However, one thing is far sure that congress leadership is very right in its assertions that no party can form the next government in the state without the support of Congress. |
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