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| Chidambaram left Congress workers high and dry | | Advantage NC | | Rustam
EARLY TIMES REPORT
Jammu, June 22: It was expected that Union Home Minister P Chidambaram would do all that he could to strengthen the NC at the cost of the Congress and he did that. His statements that New Delhi and Congress "are happy with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah"; that "there are neither any differences between the coalition partners nor any divide in the state congress over the issue"; and that "everybody in the central government is happy with Omar as chief minister" (and) "so I make it clear that there will be no rotation" do demonstrate that the critics of the NC have no place whatever in the New Delhi's scheme of things and that they have to dance to the tunes of the NC.
In fact, what Chidambaram told reporters in Kashmir yesterday was entirely consistent with the policy the Congress high command has been following towards the Kashmir-based NC ever since 1975, when the then Prime Minister and custodian of the Congress Indira Gandhi asked her own party to abdicate power in favour of the votary of plebiscite, Sheikh Abdullah, grandfather of Omar Abdullah. Ever since then, the Congress high command has been ignoring the views and sentiments of the local Congressmen and extending unqualified support to the Kashmir-centric parties, which - apart from focusing their attention only on Kashmir and its people - have also been working for the segregation of the state from the political and constitutional organization of India.
The statement of Chidambaram that there are "no differences" between the Congress and the NC and that the local Congressmen are one as far as their attitude towards the NC-led coalition government is concerned should clinch the whole issue and establish that the genuine detractors of the NC have no other option but to obey the dictates of the NC and endorse whatever it does. That he has overruled the possibility of the Congress occupying the chief minister's chair after the NC completes three years in office further establishes that even the views of the senior Congress leaders like M L Fotedar and Karan Singh on the issue, as also on the future of the Congress in the state have no impact whatever on Chidambaram and others of his ilk in the Congress high command (Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi). Fotedar and Singh had only the other day virtually expressed their no confidence in the present NC leadership and given the local Congressmen to understand that they would take up the issue with the Congress high command and persuade it to respect their sentiments.
So much so that while Fotedar had described the Mufti rule as the "golden era" and openly snubbed and ridiculed the Chief Minister, Singh had made two most unambiguous assertions. One was that the continuation of the present incumbent for full term of six years would erode the support-base of the Congress and weaken the party in the state. The other was that it was his intervention that succeeded in making the Congress high command replace the PDP's rule with that of the Congress' in November 2005. They had made several other statements and their bottom-line was that the NC must quit the office after it completes three years in office.
The moral of the story is that the Congress is doomed. The only silver-lining is that its arch rivals in the Jammu province, which could be described as the Congress' core constituency, are very weak. Not only weak but also thoroughly unpopular. I am hinting at the BJP - BJP which has fallen from grace because of what it did on April 13 during the legislative council elections, as also because the BJP has no attractive wares to put on the political market for sale. All in all, it is advantage NC. And, advantage NC means disadvantage the nation as well as Jammu and Ladakh. |
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