news details |
|
|
| Shrinking Support-base | | Congress must get CM post after three years Rustam | | JAMMU, May 21: It is almost clear that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah will hold the highest executive office in Jammu and Kashmir for full term of six years. This clearly means that the Congress high command has agreed to the suggestion of the Valley-based National Conference that the office of Chief Minister should be the sole preserve of the Valley. The statements of the Chief Minister made in this regard from time to time do not convey any other meaning.
It is obvious there are persons in New Delhi who lobby on behalf of the National Conference and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. President of the party Farooq Abdullah is there in the Union Cabinet. Omar Abdullah' brother-in-law Sachin Pilot is also there in the Union Council of Ministers. But more than that Omar Abdullah has in the person of AICC general secretary and the Congress' prime ministerial candidate Rahul Gandhi his greatest supporter. All in all Omar Abdullah is better placed. It is indeed a lop-sided and basically Kashmir-centric power-sharing deal between the National Conference and the Congress. Several political commentators have described this power-sharing deal as "Rahul Gandhi-Omar Abdullah accord".
It can be said without any hesitation that the Congress has finally decided to decimate itself in Jammu and Kashmir and throw in the political lot of the sensitive state and its people, especially the people of Jammu and Ladakh and displaced Kashmiri Hindus, with the National Conference, whose leaders, including Omar Abdullah, have on several occasions publicly declared that their core constituency is Kashmir. Not only this, it can also be said without any hesitation that the people of Jammu province would be deprived of the opportunity to again have a Chief Minister hailing from their own province.
This is not a rational power-sharing formula. In fact, this formula is not just anti-Congress, but also anti-Jammu and anti-Ladakh. This does not augur well either for the country's premier political organization nor for the people of Jammu province who for the first time in November 2005 got in the person of Ghulam Nabi Azad Chief Minister from Jammu. Why should the Congress high command jeopardize the interests of its own party and the people of Jammu province, who once again gave it the number one position in this region despite the propaganda blitz unleashed by the Jammu-based political parties, including the BJP and Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party?
These parties, which otherwise say day in and day out that these are organizations of the people of Jammu, by the people of Jammu and for the people of Jammu, are basically responsible for the sorry state of affairs. The leadership of these parties had hoodwinked and misled the people of Jammu during their extensive campaigning and strove to the hilt to create an impression that their parties would come to the power in the State after the elections and won fourteen seats, all from Jammu. This - apart from the failure of the Congress high command to field right candidates in several constituencies in Kashmir and Jammu -- was one of the important factors responsible for the defeat of many Congress candidates.
Had the people of Jammu realized that the non-Congress formations shall never come to power in Jammu and Kashmir because of its peculiar demographic landscape and that their vote for these parties would mean their own defeat, they would have voted overwhelmingly for the Congress and ensured that the office of Chief Minister remained with Jammu.
The people of Jammu cannot be blamed for what they did at the time of voting. After all, the rabble-rousers had played with their religious sensitivities by raking up emotional issues and keeping them alive throughout the campaign, which continued for several weeks. After all, they had succeeded in convincing a section of the people of Jammu that their parties were their only saviors and that, if voted to power, they would not only end discrimination against them, but would also empower them politically. And, they could succeed in beguiling the people of Jammu despite the fact that the legislators belonging to one particularly Jammu-based political party had ditched them twice - in 1998 and 2002 - by opposing the pro-Jammu universities official bill in the Assembly that should have been supported and by supporting the rabidly anti-Jammu delimitation bill in the assembly that should have been opposed tooth and nail.
But nothing can happen now. Now the people of Jammu have to wait for six long years. However, to say all this is not to mean that the Congress and the people of Jammu have lost everything. Things can still be changed and retrieved. But this would be possible only if the Congress high command is prepared to accept the fact that the country's grand old party had to pay a very heavy price for its dumb-founding act of handing over the state power to Sheikh Abdullah on a platter in 1975.
It was a classic example of political immaturity in the sense that the Congress was ruling the state and that it then commanded absolute majority both in the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council and that the Sheikh's Plebiscite Front didn't have a single member in either of the two houses. Things can be changed if the Congress high command is prepared to acknowledge that its action had brought to power an outfit which queered the Indian pitch in Kashmir and made the Congress to wait for 30 long years to come to power in the State and that too in a situation where the militant-friendly People's Democratic Party (PDP) would consistently stand on its nerves and share power with it and oppose and blackmail it at the same time.
The Congress high command has to review its stand in the larger national interest and in the interest of the people of Jammu, Ladakh and the displaced communities. It can cultivate the Muslims of Kashmir as well as the people of the other two provinces and the displaced communities by following the power-sharing formula it had devised in 2002. And, it has to because it alone has the potential of inducing the people of Jammu province to come forward and join the Congress party and sending a signal to Kashmir that the Congress high command cares as much for it as for the two other regions of the state. Not to pursue the 2002 power-sharing formula would simply mean promotion of those who believe in greater autonomy and separation from India and discouragement of those who have been fighting for the state's full integration with India and secular ethos ever since 1947, when the state acceded to India. Go in for rotational chief minister-ship. Remember, the National Conference has been consistently eroding the support-base of the Congress in Jammu province by pursuing policies which have created an impression in this province that the Congress has no say whatever in the governance of the state and that the Congress is no more than the B-team of the National Conference. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
STOCK UPDATE |
|
|
 |
| BSE
Sensex |
 |
| NSE
Nifty |
|
|
| |
CRICKET UPDATE |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
