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| With added charisma Farooq Abdullah emerges star NC campaigner | | |
Jammu, May 3
Patron of National Conference, Dr Farooq Abdullah, is back from long absence from the state. So is back his charisma which is his trump card for mobilizing peoples’ support for his party. He is conscious of it and hence has decided to campaign for regaining the lost glory of National Conference.
A major section of party leaders have been persuading him to restart his political activity so that he could turn the wind against the sail of PDP and the Congress. He has agreed to clear the road to success, which his son, Omar Abdullah, had started building. National Conference sources said that since Dr Abdullah foresees early Assembly poll he has decided to help his party to regain power which it had lost in 2002 Assembly election.
In 2002 poll the National Conference had won 28 seats against 16 by PDP and 20 by the Congress. As far as the percentage of voters was concerned the NC topped the list securing 28.24 per cent against 9.28 per cent of PDP and 24.24 of the Congress. Senior National Conference leaders were of the firm opinion that the party had lost the poll because Dr Farooq had stayed away from the campaign. Dr Farooq, according to sources close to him, had preferred to stay away from the campaign because he had told his associates that the National Conference will not win the poll. Was it an intuition or a laboured calculation nobody has the answer.
In fact at that stage the party leaders were divided over the installation of Omar Abdullah as the President of the National Conference.Staunch supporters of Dr Abdullah had felt discouraged when Omar Abdullah started asserting his authority even over those who had been colleagues of Sheikh Abdullah.And possibly Dr Abdullah wanted his son to taste the bitter fruit of politics, which he did when he lost the Assembly election from Ganderbal constituency in 2002 from where his father and grandfather used to get elected to the Assembly.
Dr Farooq is not wrong in his assessment of still retaining his charisma.This was fully demonstrated when he could attract large and responsive crowds to the recent public rallies he addressed in various parts of the state.Farooq Abdullah had predicted defeat for his party in 2002 poll and the same leader predicts victory for the National Conference in the next election.Hence he wants to take the credit for the success of his party by jumping in what is called pre-election campaign.
His victory assessment is not based on any intuition but is the outcome of his belief that for the PDP and the Congress the anti-incumbency factor may weigh heavy on the two ruling parties. In addition to this Dr Abdullah has reports that the growing tussle for supremacy between the Congress and the PDP had left no other choice for the voters except for supporting the National Conference. Will Farooq’s assessment come true? This depends on the turn the relations between the Congress and the PDP take in the coming months
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