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| Rahul-Omar duet: man tu shudam tu man shudi man jaan shudam tu tan shudi | | Islamabad shuts for Geelani but Anantnag opens for Rahul Gandhi | | Ahmed Ali Fayyaz
ANANTNAG, Apr 27: Keeping the Valley’s distinctive tradition of pleasing all, this South Kashmir capital town of Anantnag today observed near-total shutdown to oblige the hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani but enthusiastic crowds of over 6,000 National Conference (NC) and Congress supporters left no stone unturned in according a warm reception to the Generation3 scions of the Sheikh and the Nehru dynasties---Omar Abdullah and Rahul Gandhi. Signifying a new era of “our generations old friendship”, Omar and Rahul embraced each other with a reverberating replay of the paeans Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and Jawahar Lal Nehru had sung for each other at their historic rally of Lalchowk in Srinagar 60 years ago: “we’re two bodies but one soul”.
Phase-3 of the Lok Sabha polling in Jammu & Kashmir, which comes as Phase-I in the Valley, is scheduled to take place in the South Kashmir districts of Anantnag, Pulwama, Shopian and Kulgam on April 30th. A day before campaigning is supposed to end on Tuesday, Congress party’s star campaigner and General Secretary, Rahul Gandi, today arrived in to address a ruling coalition rally at the local Dak Bungalow at Khannabal. Gandhi’s maiden visit to the Valley during the current democratic exercise---which came in six months of his Assembly elections rally at the border township of Tangdhar---had evoked a call for “total shutdown” from head of the radical faction of Hurriyat Conference, Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
While a major section of the commercial transport was off the road in South Kashmir and many shops were closed over Geelani’s first call against holding of the Lok Sabha elections in J&K, Police and paramilitary forces too discouraged human movement “for security reasons”. Eyewitnesses said that scores of buses carrying participants for Rahul Gandhi’s rally were either stopped in distant peripheries or plainly forced to return. They claimed that the government agencies wanted all shops shut in Anantnag town with their argument that saboteurs could not strike in absence of the human shield.
Notwithstanding the tell-tale impact of Geelani’s call, thousands of the NC and the Congress supporters made it to the venue successfully. Disharmony between the coalition partners---which surfaced with a bizarre demonstration in Dooru yesterday---was evident even at the Khannabal show as the lower rung cadres of the two parties had a heated exchange over the seating arrangement at Dak Bungalow. However, senior leaders like MLA Dooru and former Congress Minister Ghulam Ahmed Mir, managed to douse the flames of anger. At a rally yesterday, Mir’s supporters had bitterly clashed with those of the NC District President and defeated candidate, Mohammad Akbar Ganai, for the latter’s “deliberate act” of not mentioning the MLA’s name in his address. It had caused Chief Minister Omar Abdullah leave the rally in a huff.
Minutes before the chief guest Rahul’s arrival, Omar reached here in a helicopter alongwith J&K PCC chief, Prof Saif-dud-din Soz and AICC General Secretary incharge J&K, Prithviraj Chauhan. Rahul’s fixed-wing aircraft landed in the Technical Area of Srinagar Airport at 1200 hours. Later, he left for Anantnag in a helicopter and addressed the rally at 1330 hours. Even after Rahul returned alone in his chartered aircraft, Congress leaders kept shuttling in a crisscross. While Chauhan left for New Delhi by a Kingfisher flight in the afternoon, former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who was conspicuously absent at Khannabal, reached Srinagar alongwith his wife in a helicopter at 1630 hours.
Seeking vote for NC’s Dr Mehboob Beg, Omar reiterated in his speech that Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP and L K Advani’s BJP had a “secret pact” to pursue their communal agenda. He alleged that both the “communal” parties had been running an agenda of “parochial and divisive policies”. He said that voting for PDP was voting for BJP and asserted that Kashmir’s “fully conscious electorate” would yet again reject Mufti’s party with a dressing down. “Vote for Mehboob Beg Sahib is vote for Dr Manmohan Singh”, Omar told his audiences.
In his brief address, Dr Beg demanded “adequate compensation of the enormous loss J&K has been suffering since 1960” and called for rescinding the Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan. He argued that J&K had been suffering due to “wrong distribution” of the river waters and the economically starved state was much in the need of getting some Centrally created power projects as compensation.
Much in Omar’s tone, Rahul said that by excercising their right of franchise, the people of Kashmir had to choose one between the Congress-led UPA and the BJP-led NDA government. Unlike Omar, Rahul significantly did not make frontal attacks on the PDP but conveyed implicitly that voting for PDP would be advantage BJP. He said that he was hugely banking on the new generation of electorate in Kashmir which, according to him, had been yearning for peace, development and clean governance. He asserted that young leaders like him and his “old friend” Omar Abdullah had the capacity and potential to steer this strife-torn state to a new order of peace and prosperity. He said that he and Omar would provide a whole new leadership to this country in the next 30 years.
Like in his speech in Jammu earlier this month, Rahul made remarkable references to the “generations old friendship” between the Nehru-Gandhi and Sheikh families. He said that the association created between his grandfather, Jawahar Lal Nehru, and Omar’s grandfather, Sheikh Abdullah, had a new avatar in his deep friendship with Omar Abdullah. He held out a promise to the Kashmiris that he would himself plead for their right of peace and development at the Centre should they vote for the coalition candidates.
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