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| NC membership drive in Jammu may turn out to be a futile exercise | | |
RUSTAM
JAMMU, Feb 8: The Kashmir-based and what is being frequently termed as the “Valley-centric” National Conference launched membership drive in Jammu province from R. S. Pura on February 7 with great pomp and show in the sense that it was launched by none other than the party president and Union Minister Farooq Abdullah and his son and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.
The owners of the National Conference did commit a mistake by choosing R. S. Pura for launching the membership drive. The simple reason is that R. S. Pura is an integral part of the mainstream politics and it abhors and hates the kind of ideology the National Conference preaches and propagates.
Why to single out R. S. Pura alone? The bulk of Jammu province, which returns to Assembly only 37 legislators because of the faulty of delimitation and because all the delimitation exercises in the state have all along been Kashmir-centric, opposes the ideology of the National Conference. Whatever little support-base the National Conference has in this mainstream Jammu province, it has in a few Muslim-majority pockets, especially in the erstwhile Doda district and Poonch and Rajori districts, leave aside Vijaypur, Kalakot and Nowshera, which sometime elect the National Conference candidates because of the party politics within the Congress or because of dissensions and personality and ego clashes.
That the National Conference has little support-base in Jammu province and that a very vast majority of the people of this province hates the National Conference’s ideology and politico-administrative philosophy can be seen from the last Assembly elections. The 2008 Assembly elections only saw the National Conference capturing just half a dozen seats. The National Conference would have even lost election in Vijaypur, Kalakot and Nowshera, had the Congress and the BJP not bungled while distributing tickets. The victory of the National Conference in these three constituencies was just an accident of electoral history.
It is significant to note that the popularity graph of the National Conference is declining at a very rapid pace in Jammu province. This is evident from the last results of the last three Assembly elections. In the 1996 Assembly elections, the National Conference won as many as 14 seats in the Jammu province and it achieved this remarkable victory because the party leaders did not rake up the autonomy issue they started raking up after coming to power in 1996.
The National Conference suffered humiliating defeats in the 2002 and 2008 Assembly elections because the Kashmir-based National Conference leaders, particularly Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah, annoyed the Jammu electorate by consistently insisting on its autonomy demand, as also because of other reasons, the most notable being the manner in which the National Conference perpetrated injustice after injustice on the people of Jammu province, including the Muslims who have never been considered by the Kashmiri leaders as part and parcel of the Muslim society in the real sense of the term. The result was that its tally came down from 14 in 1996 to 7 in 2002 and from 7 to 6 in 2008. The most striking aspect was its crushing defeat in the Muslim-majority districts of the Jammu province. The Muslim-majority districts in the Jammu province return to the Assembly as many as 13 legislators.
That the people of Jammu province are for the mainstream politics could be seen from the performance of the Congress, the BJP and the Panthers Party in the 2008 Assembly elections. The Congress won 13 seats, the BJP 11 and the Panthers Party 3. The Congress captured five seats from the erstwhile Doda district and one each from from the Rajouri and Poonch districts – all Muslim-majority areas. Besides, two independent candidates won handsomely from the Kathua and Bishnah Assembly constituencies – both these candidates subscribe to the mainstream politics.
That means the mainstream and pro-Jammu candidates captured as many as 29 seats. The remaining 8 seats went to the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party – National Conference 6 and People’s Democratic Party a paltry 2.
The custodians of the National Conference must not ignore these hard facts. If they wish to expand their support-base in the Jammu province they have no other option but to abandon their autonomy plank and end the 62-year-old gross discrimination with the people of Jammu province. They must not forget that an overwhelming majority of the people of province takes their demand for autonomy to mean a demand that is anti-India, anti-Jammu, anti-minorities, pro-separatist, divisive, communal and fundamentally bad and regressive. Similarly, they must not forget that it is economic and administrative and social policies and not religion that play a crucial role in motivating the electorate.
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