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| NC, Congress up in arms against each other | | Alliance or no alliance | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, June 7: The NC and the Congress are up in arms against each other. The NC has made it loud and clear that it will not enter into an alliance with the Congress and contest the assembly elections separately as and when held. The NC has been again and again making its stand clear. It has been saying so loudly, particularly after it won by an accident all the three Lok Sabha seats from the valley defeating the Congress in the Baramulla and Anantnag constituencies and the PDP in all the three constituencies, including Srinagar from where the party chief Farooq Abdullah won. Farooq Abdullah could poll only a little over 1 lakh votes in a constituency of nearly 13 lakh voters. The NC believes that it could secure comfortable majority in the 98-member assembly. Its belief stems from the fact that it led in 30 assembly segments in the valley and it has some support-base in a few pockets in the Muslim-majority areas in Jammu province and parts of Kargil district. It is a different story that the NC could poll only 7.8 per cent of the total votes polled in the valley. The NC had not fielded its candidates from any of the three Lok Sabha constituencies in Jammu and Ladakh. It had left both the Lok Sabha seats in Jammu for the Congress, contested friendly elections with the Congress in the Baramulla and Anantnag constituencies. The Congress had not fielded its candidate in the Srinagar constituency as per the seat sharing arrangement. The stand taken by the NC has, it seems, stung the defeated Congress. This became clear the other day when the CC chief GA Mir without mincing words said that the Congress suffered reverses after reverses in the state because of its alliance with the NC. The NC candidate former justice Hasnain Masoodi had defeated him. "The party's 'continued alliances' with other parties and mainly the pre-poll alliances in the state - obviously with the NC - has been the basic cause for not getting any seats in the Kashmir valley since 1999," GA Mir was quoted as saying. Actually, he was reflecting on his own defeat in the Anantnag constituency. The Congress lost the Lok Sabha election from this constituency for the fifth time in a row. In 1996, the Congress had won all the three seats from Kashmir. The NC had boycotted the 1996 general elections. Whatever the provocation, it is absolutely clear that the gulf between the NC and the Congress has widened. And this is advantage the BJP. Fractured or divided opposition suits the BJP. |
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