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| PDP, BJP up the ante, ridicule Congress | | Empowering Panchayats | | Neha
Jammu, Apr 24: The main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the otherwise leaderless and issueless Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have upped the ante and unleashed a full-scale campaign against the Congress and the National Conference (NC). While the BJP has ridiculed the Congress leadership saying it has no moral right to criticize the NC's stand on the issue of empowerment of elected Panchayats, Panchs and Sarpanchs, as it itself is in the Government, the PDP has said that the Congress and the NC are "engaged in a mock war of words over the issue of devolution of powers to Panchayats".
It is important to note that while the PDP leadership has been criticizing the NC and the Congress for their utter failure to empower Panchayats for quite sometime now, the BJP joined the issue only yesterday in the real sense of the term. The BJP asked the Congress to quit the Government if it really feels that the NC doesn't care for it or the NC has failed to respect the coalition dharma by ignoring its suggestions, including its demand seeking empowerment of Panchayats, Panchs and Sarpanchs. What induced the BJP to make common cause with the PDP was the war of words that has been going on since several weeks on this issue as well as the seemingly open fight between the JKPCC president, Prof Saif-ud-Din Soz, and additional general secretary of the NC, Sheikh Mustafa Kamaal. It was only on Sunday that the war of words between the Congress and NC leaders escalated: Soz urged the elected Panchs and Sarpanchs at Rajouri to launch a campaign against the State Government and assured them his unstinted support and Kamaal reacted violently saying Soz was playing the role of opposition and only pretending that he was for the empowerment of Panchayats, Panchs and Sarpanchs. Yesterday, Kamaal even challenged Soz to demonstrate his strength if he really wished to take cudgels with the NC.
The BJP took the plunge feeling that it could fish in the troubled waters and regain the political ground it lost over the period owing to the kind of politics it played. It can take advantage of the situation as it prevails today in Jammu province by exposing the weaknesses of the Congress party, its chief political rival in the Jammu province's 24 Hindu-majority constituencies. The BJP had, it bears recalling, lost its sheen and appeal on April 13 last year, when seven out of 11 MLAs cross voted to ensure the victory of the Congress and NC candidates seeking election to the Legislative Council. These seven MLAs had voted against their own party's candidate. The BJP high command expelled seven party MLAs last year itself on the ground that they had allegedly committed an act of political dishonesty for pecuniary gain or other favours.
Anyway, the point is that the BJP has found in the open fight between the Congress and the NC an invaluable opportunity to hit back and draw some political mileage. The BJP's blistering attack on the Congress and its suggestion that the Congress party should withdraw support to the Government if it feels that its coalition partner had been humiliating it and not considering its suggestions and demands need to be viewed in this context.
As for the PDP, it has been exposing the NC and the NC-led coalition Government right from the day the NC formed Government in January 2009, in alliance with the Congress party. It has been successfully propagating that the NC and the NC-led Government are corrupt to the core, inefficient, anti-people, anti-democratic, and even cruel and immoral. However, it was only yesterday that the PDP leadership not only attacked the NC for its negative attitude towards local bodies, including Panchayats, but also blasted the Congress. The attack was launched by none other than PDP patron and former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Accusing the NC and Congress of "engaging in a mock war of words over the devolution of powers to Panchayats", Mufti, inter-alia, said: "Both Congress and National Conference are reluctant to share power at the village level with the people who are the real stakeholders in development process. They are trying to hoodwink people through statements that have lost validity. They have failed to hold block and district level elections or releasing remuneration to Panchayat members".
"The coalition partners are subverting the institutions for petty partisan interests. They want to control municipalities through pliable officials for making backdoor entries in thousands and also making money by promoting illegal constructions converting urban areas into virtual slums. Both the Government of India and the State Government have been paying only lip service to the cause of empowerment and in the process have robbed the institutions of self-governance of their credibility and potential for change. While Congress was instrumental in empowering Panchayats in rest of the country, they are resorting to double standards in J&K by being part of the resistance to change. On the one hand, the Government of India honours certain selected officials for holding elections to the Panchayats in the State and, on the other, it has collided with the State Government to deny thousands of Panchs and Sarpanchs the powers that the Constitution has granted them all over the country. The real heroes of the exercise, including the 80 per cent voters who elected the Panchayat members and the field level officers who worked day and night in conducting elections, all have been humiliated in an exceptionally insensitive choice of recipients of the medals, while rendering the Panchayats as mere show pieces used only to distort the discourse about empowerment of the people," he also said while exposing the Congress party.
It was perhaps for the first time in the last more than three years that Mufti Sayeed used such a strong language against the Congress. Hitherto, the PDP leadership used to be very harsh towards the NC, its arch political rival in Kashmir. That the Mufti this time chose to launch a scathing attack both on the NC and Congress shows that the PDP has finally realized that it is not just the NC which is responsible for what has been happening in the State but it is the NC-Congress combine which is actually responsible for the difficult situation the State is in.
The Congress leadership just cannot ignore the changing attitude of the PDP, as also the manner in which the BJP has taken the plunge with a view to tarnishing the image of the Congress party by telling the people that it is simply taking recourse to hollow sloganeering to hoodwink and mislead the people. The position of the Congress has become quite untenable and it cannot afford to conduct itself in the manner it has conducted it thus far. It has to change its style and conduct radically if it wants to remain relevant in the State's political arena. |
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