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| NC, BJP gainers in the Lal Chowk stand-off | | Omar has no worries after gaining AICC support to hard stance | | Ahmed Ali Fayyaz
EARLY TIMES REPORT
SRINAGAR, Jan 25: Mainstream opposition party, BJP, as well as the separatist opposition outfit, JKLF, were gunning for Omar Abdullah and his National Conference-led coalition in Jammu & Kashmir until September 2010. Call it irony or DNA characteristics of the J&K politics, both are now helping once beleaguered Chief Minister to reclaim the ground he lost in the death of 112 civilian protesters in his principal constituency of Kashmir last year.
Perhaps nothing better could have brought Omar Abdullah back to the glamour in Valley. Notwithstanding the impression in a section of the population that Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's regional party had been created by the BJP in 1999 to checkmate NC's advances over autonomy, PDP has left no stone unturned to paint Farooq Abdullah in the saffron colour. Even earlier this week, PDP attempted to float that the Republic Day flag hoisting stand-off was nothing but a "fixed match" between NC and BJP. And that was not for nothing.
The rhetoric of abusing New Delhi---and anything "Indian", including the Reserve Bank of India---has been recognized by political establishment at the Centre as an essential qualification for every Kashmiri leader since day one of accession. Die-hard Indians like Mufti took decades to realize that confrontation with Delhi was the bliss, if contained within limits.
However, luck did not favour Mufti in 2008. In August, he got entangled in the cobweb when 'Ragda' transcended from "National" and "Bharat" to revered deities of the religion of bureaucrats and politicians in Delhi. Rest of the damage came from the most unexpected Ajmal Qasab whose strike in Mumbai in the thick of Assembly elections in J&K made Mufti and his clan untouchable for Congress. Patrons like Pranab Mukherjee and Makhan Lal Fotedar gave in, rather desperately. NC, obviously, was the beneficiary.
An equally die-hard Indian Farooq Abdullah's greenhorn son gained over Mufti's experience. He drew lines to remember that limits would not have been to be crossed. Omar intelligently positioned himself somewhere between the jingoist Farooq and the pseudo-separatist Mufti. He asserted as an Indian Chief Minister to retain his acceptability in the country without mugging his father's refrain of 'atoot ang' and applying vermilion to his forehead at temples and Gurudwaras. He exhibited the temerity of calling Kashmir "a political dispute" well at the face of Prime Minister in Qazigund, put himself and his government on the page of Hurriyat and Bar Association in the Shopian tragedy in 2009 and allowed his Cabinet colleague Ali Mohammad Sagar to spit on the CRPF in 2010 but did not make himself politically untouchable in Delhi. That paid him dividends in 2009 as well as in 2010. |
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