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| Would NC learn lessons from Panchayat elections? | | Who said voters did not vote party in those elections? | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, July 14: The much hyped Panchayat elections held across Jammu and Kashmir after many years have thrown up winners and losers depending on their popularity at the grassroots level, but also in the process posted some very serious lessons for the ruling National Conference (NC) in the Valley.
To learn from them or to ignore them, the NC would be doing that to its own advantage or absolute peril.
One of the most interesting lessons the NC learnt as a party and the state chief minister, Omar Abdullah learnt as its president is that the people cannot be taken for granted. They will hit you where it hurts the most.
Omar Abdullah has been interacting with the newly elected Panches and Sarpanches across the length and breadth of the state, but no other interaction said more for the NC and its president than the one Omar Abdullah had in his own constituency, Ganderbal.
The NC has conceded much ground to its arch rival, the PDP in many constituencies in the north of the Valley including Ganderbal. Thanks to the divergent signals and the tug of war between the local NC leaders in J&K's most prestigious assembly constituency, the NC could be handing over the constituency to the PDP or to any other rival on a platter unless Omar Abdullah acts personally on what he told the Panches and Sarpanches while interacting with them in his assembly constituency.
"I have again learnt an important lesson from the Panchayat elections in my constituency. It is always better to learn lessons from your own home than from someone else's", Omar told the elected village elders.
Needless to add, the NC's arch rival, PDP would always benefit by proxy wherever the ruling party chooses to ignore the people or allows the party to be run like a fiefdom by some party activists whose present, past and future are all murky.
Thanks to the senior NC leader and forest minister, Mian Altaf Ahmad, who represents the adjacent Kangan assembly constituency, that the PDP did not make mincemeat of the NC in Kangan also. Mian's political clout and influence has always come very handy for the NC be it for providing a readymade audience for the NC functions or organizing political meetings with respectable public presence. The respect for the Mians goes beyond party politics in Kangan and the NC has been taking the unflinching support of the Mian family also for granted since long.
It is not important to discuss the winners in south Kashmir districts of Pulwama, Shopian, Kulgam and Anantnag. No marks for guessing winners there because the districts are the political strongholds of Mufti's party. Yet some glimmer of hope for the NC did appear at an odd place in those elections, but that again must be attributed to the non-attendance by the PDP and not a sign of the NC breaking new ground there.
There are hardly any indications that the ruling party is prepared to learn any lessons from its debacle in the Panchayat polls. The tragedy is that the NC is not even prepared to accept the fact that it lost quite a bit of its traditional bastions to its rivals during those elections.
The usual refrain of the NC leaders has been that the Panchayat polls were fought on non-party basis and therefore, there is no reason to see the winners and losers as against or for the ruling party. If the NC middle rung and ground level leaders are using this refrain to save themselves from being scolded red by party general Sheikh Nazir, or the president Omar Abdullah then they are perfectly within their rights of self-defence.
But, if the refrain is intended to deceive and mislead the chief minister and party president then they could not have done a worse disservice to the party they have been claiming to represent when government servants are to be pressurized to extend favours.
The Panchyat polls were definitely fought on a non-party basis, but the political affiliations of those fighting the elections were not only too well known to their voters, but these affiliations also finally determined the fate of the contestants.
No voter in any village of the Valley voted without knowing which party he/she was voting when the Panchayat polls were held. If Omar Abdullah is now being told that the NC was not in the fray in these elections and therefore, the question of its victory or defeat did not arise, then Omar does not need any outside enemies. He has them well entrenched within his own party. |
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