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| Azad raises hands, says will not return to state politics | | News Analysis | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, July 7: It was only on July 4 that the Congress leaders adopted a unanimous resolution at Srinagar meet saying that Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and former J&K Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad will be the party's chief ministerial candidate in the next assembly elections in the state. The resolution was adopted in the presence of Azad himself, in-charge J&K Congress Ambika Soni, former JKPCC president and union minister Saif-ud-Din Soz and president of JKPCC chief Ghulam Ahmad Mir.
The resolution was adopted after a dominant group within the Congress opposed tooth and nail the suggestion that the Congress should forge an alliance with the PDP to keep the BJP out of the corridors of power. Azad himself opposed the suggestion.
When the resolution to the effect that Azad will be the party's chief ministerial candidate was adopted, Azad didn't say a word, thus suggesting that he would not mind quitting national politics and taking the plunge in the J&K politics. He took two days to come out with a statement that he would not rejoin the state politics and was content with the role that he has been playing at the national level.
Why did Azad reject the resolution adopted by over 100 Congress leaders at the Srinagar's two-day-long crucial meet - meet held in the wake of the BJP's sudden decision to withdraw support to the Mehbooba Mufti government on June 19?
It is obvious that he took two days to weigh the pros and cons as well as the poll prospects of the Congress in the restive J&K. There are reasons to believe that he must have considered what the people of Jammu province did to him during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He was the Congress' candidate in the Kathua-Udhampur-Doda Lok Sabha constituency. He was a heavy weight pitted against a novice from the BJP. The Congress was confident that Azad would win handsomely. But it didn't happen. He lost the election very badly and with huge margin.
It appears the kind of defeat the people of this constituency, a Congress bastion, must have influenced the thinking process of Azad. Besides, there are cogent reasons to believe that he had not forgotten the fact that the Congress could not win even one Hindu-majority seats in the Jammu province. There are almost 28 Hindu-majority seats in Jammu province. It was for the first time after 1965 that the majority community in the Jammu province rejected the Congress outright. Other factors which might have forced Azad not to lead the Congress in the next assembly elections could be the anger he himself caused in Jammu province through his patently Kashmir-centric policies, including introduction of Sharia, creation of four new districts in Kashmir, as against the one recommended by the Wazir Commission Report, and snatching of small piece of land at Baltal in Kashmir from the Amarnath Shrine Board.
The decision of Azad not to lead the Congress party in the next assembly elections could be viewed in this context, as also in the light of the fact that the people of Jammu are very angry with it because the NC and the Congress settled thousands of Rohingyas in Jammu and Samba districts allegedly for vote-bank politics and to "change Jammu's demography for ulterior purposes". |
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