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| Was Nehru lesser Congressman? | | At last Azad, Soz factions didn’t elbow out | |
ZAFAR CHOUDHARY
Jammu, Nov 14: Since the rift between two powerful sections of Congress in Jammu and Kashmir deepened earlier this year, the anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi and later Indira Gandhi witnessed high degree of lobby politics than the memorial services. Both occasions were used by the lobbies headed by Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and PCC President Saifuddin Soz to convey their strength to the powers that be in Delhi. However, today, on birth anniversary of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru neither the lobby heads nor their loyalists were seen anywhere around –was a Nehru a lesser Congressman or the scores between lobbies have already been settled down?
On this day in 2006, Jammu city was flooded with more than 50,000 children drawn from the across the region to mark Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru’s birth anniversary as Children’s Day. The brain behind mega event, billed as first and only its kind in country since death of Nehru, was that of then Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. The function reflected more of an exercise projecting Azad as poster boy of Nehru-Gandhi legacy than introducing Nehru’s ideals among the children.
The strength thinned down in 2007. In 2008, Nehru’s birth anniversary came in the middle of Assembly elections and the focus was much on the ‘adult franchise’ literally than the children. The trend, however, returned this year with state Congress president Saifuddin Soz trying to repeat Azad’s show on Gandhi Jayanti earlier last month. He brought along the Union Minister Prithviraj Chavan to demonstrate his show of strength which did not turn out as big as expected. Things did not go well with Azad who was away in Delhi on the occasion.
As Azad and Soz have hardly left any doubts about their intentions to cut each other to size, it was a massive political drama on the death anniversary of Indira Gandhi late last month. Soz organized a function at Abhinav Theater in Jammu where he had only one Minister from the state cabinet –Raman Bhalla. To his surprise, the Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand, who owes allegiance to Azad, hosted a parallel function in his constituency which turned out to be a bigger show for being in the rural area where his electorates turned up in thousands. He had Works Minister GM Saroori along. Next morning a full page advertisements in almost all local newspapers projected Tara Chand’s function in memory of Indira Gandhi a bigger show which overshadowed Soz’s.
The scores between the two powerful factions of Congress appear to have been settled down on the anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi as they did not take much interest in Jawahar Lal Nehru’s birth anniversary. On Saturday there was a modest function at the Congress headquarters here where the old veterans like Pandit Mangat Ram Sharma and Dharam Paul Sharma led the show while Ministers and Members of Parliament preferred to spend the day with school children in their constituencies. There was not much politics.
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