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| Jharkhand poll result bring little cheer for Omar | | |
ABID SHAH
NEW DELHI, DEC 24: Omar Abdullah’s Jharkhand electioneering has somehow failed to impress voters with the exception of Daltonganj where Congress candidate Krishnanand Tripathi won the Assembly polls.
Omar had toured Palamu Division of Jharkhand on December 9 to seek vote for Congress Party with whose support he became a coalition Chief Minister in Jammu and Kashmir.
He visited and addressed an election rally in support of Congress in Daltonganj besides a few other places.
Yet unlike Daltonganj, Congress candidates in predominantly Muslim constituencies of Hussainabad and Panki came at fourth and eighth positions respectively despite Omar’s strong plea to the electorate in these Vidhan Sabha areas to vote for Congress.
This, indeed, signifies a miscalculation on the part of the Congress regarding Omar’s image as a Muslim friendly face who could woo voters even outside the confines of Jammu and Kashmir.
In Hussainabad Congress candidate Kamlesh Kumar Singh not only lost to Sanjay Kumar Singh Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal but also came fourth at the end of final round of counting held yesterday.
Vidhan Sabha seat of Panki turned out to be even worse for Congress where its candidate Sajjad Khan got less than 2,000 votes and, therefore, was relegated to eighth position. An independent Videsh Singh won the polls.
Significantly, none of the Maoist-turned-Jharkhand-Mukti-Morcha-or RJD candidates like Satish Kumar from Daltonganj or Ranjan also known as Keshwar Yadav from Panki could make it to the Assembly.
Palamu division is a Maoist dominated region where extreme left groups ostensibly seek liberated zones to end tribal farm workers exploitation through armed struggles which Congress perhaps figured as a foil to J&K’s separatists rant for Azadi and call for boycott of polls while selecting Omar to help counter this and seek vote for Congress.
Yet unlike Sajjad Lone who walked away from separatists ranks to join the electoral fray in J&K about a year ago only to be defeated in the last Assembly polls, Maoist-turned-JMM-candidate Paulus Surin won the electoral battle from Torpa near Jharkhand capital Ranchi.
This, indeed, belies expectations that mainstream parties like Congress and BJP may share against Maoists entering the Assembly with the help of regional parties in Jharkhand.
Thus, predominantly tribal State of Jharkhand turns out to be so different from Jammu and Kashmir where no wonder that Omar’s election mission too remained short of expectations.
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