Early Times Report
Jammu, Mar 28: The election process to elect 6 members to the Lok Sabha from J&K, like in other states, is on. Like other states, J&K is also witnessing strange things with non-BJP political parties and groups supporting each other and tearing into each other at the same time. It's happening in UP, Bihar, Delhi and WB. The election scene of J&K is no different. Like in other states, the non-BJP political parties are also eager to defeat the BJP candidates, and, like in other states, they are also tearing into each other.
The case in point is the so-called pre-poll alliance between the Congress and the NC. As per the seat sharing formula, the Congress has fielded its candidates in Jammu province and also fielded two candidates in the Kashmir's Baramulla and Anantnag Lok Sabha constituencies, where the contest between the two parties would be "friendly". Only the NC and the Congress could explain as to what they mean by friendly contests. Contest is a contest.
More significantly, as per the seat-sharing formula, Srinagar is the only Lok Sabha seat, which has been earmarked for the NC with its chief, Farooq Abdullah, as the party candidate. That the NC could get only one seat out of the five in Jammu province and Kashmir province speaks for itself. It punctures the oft-repeated claim and assertion of the Abdullahs that the NC is the premier political organization of the state and establishes that it is not a state-level party, but a region-based party, with its influence confined to a few assembly segments in Kashmir where the people hardly vote.
And what the NC leaders have been saying about the Congress? Former Speaker and NC candidate from Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency, Mohammad Akbar Lone, has been saying again and again that the "Congress is worse than the BJP" and that "it was the Congress which eroded the state's special status". The NC president Farooq Abdullah and vice-president Omar Abdullah have been maintaining a stony silence, thus suggesting that they are with Lone. In Jammu, the NC provincial president is making announcements on a daily-basis that the "NC will not forge any kind of alliance with the Congress in the assembly elections" and that "it is supporting the Congress only in Jammu province".
All this should serve to demonstrate that the pre-poll-alliance between the NC and the Congress is a sham alliance. That it is an unholy alliance and alliance of convenience could also be seen from the fact that both the parties are all set to field their candidates in the lone Ladakh Lok Sabha constituency.
The fact of the matter is that all the political parties, including the NC, the Congress, the PDP, and even the BJP, are struggling to remain relevant in their own respective constituencies. |
