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| Azad’s development odyssey takes break in Bhaderwah as he challenges Abdullahs | | | ZAFAR CHOUDHARY
Jammu, Dec 12: In his campaign trail across the state, the Congress leader and former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has remained focused on a typical development essay with a full stop at the Peoples Democratic Party. However, in his home constituency of Bhaderwah the discourse is entirely different –it is about National Conference, Dr Farooq Abdullah and the (in)famous Ganderbal constituency.
Wherever he has gone for the campaign, Azad’s speeches have remained the same –“I carried out development in Jammu and Kashmir in my tenure of two and half years which exceeds combined record of past 60 years”. And then he adds, “I had to much more but the Peoples Democratic Party brought my government down”. Interestingly, in Bhaderah, Azad is not talking about his ‘developmental achievements’ and is not making mention of how the PDP cut his development odyssey short. Here he talks about National Conference and asks people, “how can you trust Dr Farooq Abdullah’s claims of developing Jammu and Kashmir when he could not develop his home turf of Ganderbal.
Azad had won by-elections from Bhaderwah in 2006 and is now seeking re-election from there. Unlike token election of 2006 when NC and PDP did not field any candidate against him and BJP had put a dummy, this time there is a contest. National Conference has fielded former Advocate General Mohammad Aslam Goni who had polled a significant 10,135 votes in 2002 against 16,962 of Congress candidate Mohammad Sharief Niaz. Therefore, Azad’s elaborate comments on development scenario in Ganderbal, poor performance of Abdullahs and missing a mention of Muftis is not quite out of place.
At around 10 places in his constituency, Azad made his audience aware of the indifference of the Abdullahs towards their constituency and then goes on count the development he carried out in Ganderbal. “Ganderbal had a tryst with development only when I took over” says Azad and adds, “it was me who created district, established Degree College in Ganderbal and sanctioned a tehsil for Lar”.
“Now he hoodwinks the public by promising to develop the entire state and changing the lives of the people,” he said. He said that had NC paid any heed towards the sufferings of the masses during the decades oftheir rule the people would not have been suffering for the lack of basic amenities. He was addressing the series of public rallies at Thanala, Kansar, Manthla, Katayara, Guraka, Bhatoli, Baani, Halaran and Bhella in Bhaderwah constituency as part of an election campaign for himself today.
He said that no other party other than Congress is the best sympathizer of poor including particularly the Gujjars, Bakerwals, Gaddies and other Scheduled Tribes.
He said that Congress has given mandates to 8 Gujjar leaders while as NC has given mandate to only 3 Gujjars, which is two seats more than the ratio of their population in the state.He asserted that during Mufti’s regime the reservation for STs in jobs was reduced to 4 and to only 5 for the in-service promotion but soon after he took the reins of the state he had increased the reservation to 8 and 10 respectively.
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