| Cosmetic structural changes unlikely to change the NC's fortunes | | Too little, too late | | Neha
JAMMU, June 4: The defeated and humiliated NC leaders, especially party president Farooq Abdullah, working president and CM Omar Abdullah and Mustafa Kamaal, are working overtime to create an environment that is conducive for the revival of the Kashmir's premier organization. The core group of the party, which is dominated by the Abdullah family, has met and reportedly decided to affect some changes in the party's structure. The core group could show the provincial presidents Devendra Singh Rana and Nasir Aslam Wani the door. The core group could also appoint the present general secretary of the party, Sheikh Nazir, as patron of the party, Mustafa Kamaal as vice-president and Ali Mohammad Sagar as general secretary.
The reported changes, if affected, would be no more than cosmetic changes, notwithstanding the fact that certain important office-bearers did create more problems for the party than helping it surmount the problems that existed before the elections to the Lok Sabha took place by making highly provocative and irresponsible statements on a daily basis. It's true that Rana and Wani, instead of focusing on the issues the people held dear or the issues which were facing them, converted the election into secular versus communal debate and made Narendra Modi and PDP their chief election planks to please their masters in the party and contributed to the ignominious defeat of the NC, but all the three Abdullahs had also done the same. In fact, it was the Abdullahs who took the lead, thus leaving the Ranas and the Wanis with no other option to say what, they felt, would please their masters.
The removal of the Ranas and the Wanis from the positions they hold and the elevation of Kamaal from the position of the additional general secretary to the position of vice-president and appointment of the present general secretary of the party, ailing Sheikh Nazir, as patron of the party will in no way help the party improve its poll prospects. The reason is simple: Sheikh Nazir, Mustafa Kamaal and Ali Mohammad Sagar were already the big faces of the party. Just by changing their positions in the party, you cannot change the people's attitude towards the party or improve your poll prospects. For the causes responsible for the defeat of the NC are deeper. The NC, in the words of AICC member and former Cabinet Minister Abdul Gani Vakil, lost the election because of "corruption, mismanagement and mis-goverance". Indeed, a very serious indictment based on hard facts. Let the Abdullahs do whatever they want in their desperate bid to win back the trust of the people of Kashmir, but nothing is likely to happen unless the NC is run by persons with mass experience. It would not be an overstatement if someone may says so that the Abdullahs inning has ended and that only radical changes in the party's structure and its political philosophy that has outlived its utility. |
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