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| Azad faction says alliance with NC would be disastrous for Congress | | 2014 elections | | Rustam
JAMMU, Jan 2: One doesn't really know if the Congress and National Conference (NC) would contest the upcoming Lok Sabha and Assembly elections together or separately. But one thing is becoming clear with each passing day: The Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad-led faction in the Congress party in Jammu and Kashmir is vehemently opposed to the idea of forging any pre-poll alliance with the NC and wants that the Congress must contest the coming elections on its own.
On Tuesday, a number of former Congress Ministers, including former Deputy Chief Minister, sitting MLAs and MLCs and several senior leaders issued a joint statement to demonstrate their opposition to the suggestion that there should be a pre-poll alliance between the Congress and the PDP. The signatories to the statement hailed Azad and AICC president Saif-ud-Din Soz for their suggestion that the Congress would consider the views of the party workers and cadres before taking a final decision in this regard.
And On Wednesday, many Congress leaders belonging to the Azad faction termed the NC as "deceitful" and decided to approach the Congress high command in Delhi against having any kind of pre-poll alliance with the NC. Not just this, some of the critics of the NC went to the extent of charging the NC with hatching conspiracies against the Congress to weaken it, especially in the erstwhile Doda district that elects six MLAs.
Former Cabinet Minister and Azad loyalist G M Saroori, MLA from Inderwal, openly accused the NC of hatching conspiracies against the Congress and said that any pre-poll alliance with the NC would prove disastrous for the Congress party. "Despite running a coalition with us, the NC has been brazenly hatching conspiracies to weaken the Congress in the erstwhile Doda district," said Saroori, and added that "alliance with the NC would prove disastrous for the party" and that "we will visit Delhi to inform the high command about the 'misdeeds' of the coalition partner". "Besides meeting national leaders, we will take up the issue in the coming AICC convention on January 17. The convention will be an appropriate platform to caution the high command against having a pre-poll alliance in Jammu and Kashmir," he was also quoted as saying. . "During our meeting with AICC secretary and in-charge of party affairs in Jammu and Kashmir Main-ul Haque, we made it clear that the Congress was capable of defeating all parties in Jammu and Kashmir under the leadership of Ghulam Nabi Azad and chief Saif-ud-Din Soz," Saroori also disclosed.
It was not only Saroori who went public to register his opposition to the talk of pre-poll alliance between the Congress and the NC. Chairman of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council-Kargil (LAHDC-K), Asgar Ali Karbalaie, also opposed the idea of pre-poll alliance. Publicly opposing the NC's suggestion for a pre-poll alliance, he reportedly said that the "experiment of Kargil would be put before the high command to oppose a pre-poll alliance with the NC". "By winning elections in Kargil in September last year, we have proved that the Congress is strong enough to defeat any party--- be it the coalition partner or any opposition party," he reportedly said, and added that "we should form our own Government in Jammu and Kashmir, instead of depending upon others". "We will explain to the high command that the outcome of Kargil elections is a clear indication that the Congress is the only party which has a following in all regions of the State," he also said.
All this suggests that all is not well with the Congress-NC coalition and that a powerful section within the Congress is all set to oppose NC working president and Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah's insistence on a pre-poll alliance with the Congress. Omar Abdullah has been advocating the need for a pre-poll alliance with the Congress since October 2012 saying it is a must to keep the main opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP) away from the corridors of power. |
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