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| Calling NC a state-level party a misnomer | | Dwindling support-base | |
Early Times Report
JAMMU, Mar 8: It's now almost official. The National Conference (NC) will field its candidates for the three Lok Sabha seats in the Kashmir valley. Infact, it announced its candidates several weeks ago and they included NC president and Union Minister Farooq Abdullah from Srinagar, Mehboob Beg from Anantnag and Sahreef-u-Din Shariq from Baramulla, all sitting members. The Congress will field two candidates for the Jammu-Poonch and Kathua-Udhampur-Doda Lok Sabha constituencies as well as Ladakh seat. If one goes by what Congress MP Lal Singh said last week in Jammu, then it can be said that the Congress would field him for the constituency he has been representing since 2004 and Madan Lal Sharma would be fielded for the Jammu-Poonch Lok Sabha seats. It is not clear if the Congress high command would field the same candidate who could not make it to the Lok Sabha due to the double-game the NC played.
All this suggests two things. One, the NC is no more a state-level party; it is a one-region party. Not even one-region party; it is a party having support-base confined to a few Assembly constituencies in the Kashmir Valley. Bulk of its political space has been captured by the main opposition People's Democratic Party by exposing the omissions and commissions of the NC-led coalition Government and the NC leadership is finding it extremely difficult to face the challenge being posed by the PDP. The NC leadership needs to stop terming its party a state-level party. It should recognize that it is just a one-region party and that it has hardly any say in the state's two other regions of Jammu and Ladakh. Actually, the NC leadership should have admitted in 2009 itself that its was a one-region party. In 2009 as well, NC had not fielded any candidate for any of the two Lok Sabha seats in Jammu province. Nor had it fielded a candidate for the Ladakh Lok Sabha seat.
The other thing that also becomes clear is that the Congress also doesn't have support-base across the state and that its area of influence and activities is also confined to some Assembly constituencies in Jammu province and Leh district. It is a different story that the Congress leadership claims day in and day out that the Congress party is very strong in all the three regions of the state and that it would emerge very strong in the upcoming elections. The fact is that both the NC and the Congress have become very weak over the period. The leadership of both these parties is responsible for the dwindling support-base of their respective parties. The most striking aspect of the whole situation is that neither the leadership of the NC nor that of the Congress is prepared to look back and ponder what has gone wrong or what has driven the people away from these two parties. |
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