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| Kamaal on the offensive; attacks Cong, PDP, BJP and NPP | | Frustration & Desperation | | Neha
JAMMU, Aug 20: Frustrated and desperate NC leadership has, it appears, worked out a strategy against its political rivals. The man who has been charged with the responsibility of giving effect to this strategy is none other than NC additional general secretary and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah's uncle and party supremo and Union Minister Farooq Abdullah, Sheikh Mustafa Kamaal. Both Farooq and Omar seldom speak against the Congress high command (read Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi and daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra) as well as the UPA Government, but they do speak against the PDP, their arch-political rival in Kashmir. The political constituency of the NC and the PDP is the same and, hence, they are at daggers drawn.
Mustafa Kamaal is a right choice, as this strategy helps Farooq and Omar both at the centre and in the state. They can tell the Congress high command that Kamaal is outspoken and that whatever he says are his personal views. They can also use Kamaal to keep the pot boiling in the state and confront him with the Congress with whose help the NC has been ruling the state and sharing power at the centre, as also with the PDP, the BJP and the NPP. They have been doing so quite meticulously for months and years no.
The NC strategy appears to be based on the Chinese dictum "Offense is the best defence". Since the NC and the NC-led coalition Government have nothing in their report card which can be appreciated and since all the major political parties in the state, including the one led in the state by Saif-ud-Din Soz, have been consistently attacking them, the NC leadership has thought it politically prudent to unleash through Mustafa Kamaal a no-holds-barred propaganda blitz against its political opponents.
Only on Friday, Kamaal launched a frontal attack against the PDP, the BJP, the NPP and the Congress and tried his level best to paint the leadership of these parties black and convince the people that the only party which was people-centric, state-centric and democratic and secular was his own party.
At Samba, he attacked the PDP, the BJP and the NPP and said that "these parties are creating confusion in the minds of people and are hell-bent to divide the masses in the name of caste, religion, language and religion". Besides, he reiterated the NC stand on restoration of autonomy and demanded that the Centre-State relations be redefined, "oppressive" AFSPA be revoked and relations with Pakistan be harmonized. He put forth these divisive and unsettling demands overlooking the fact that whatever he said and demanded was something the people of Jammu hate the most.
At Mera Madrian, Akhnoor, the same day, he not only reiterated his stand on autonomy or pre-1953 politico-constitutional status and demanded revocation of AFSPA, but also blasted the Congress leadership and said that the Congress was violating "raj dharma". "This attitude would be counter-productive and boomerang on them (Congress). They should not forget that 'raj dharma' binds them to saving people in a fair and just manner. This must not only be done but should seem to be done as Governments keep going and coming. Congress party should leave nothing bitter or adverse for future to give a chance to the new Government to adopt a 'pay back attitude' as politics creates strange bed-fellows," he reportedly said while attacking the Congress leaders, especially Soz and his supporters. Health Minister Sham Lal Sharma is one of the blind supporters of Soz.
The BJP and the NPP have reacted and pooh-poohed the NC leader who is, it can be said, causing more harm to his own party than helping it retrieve the lost political space. The PDP takes on the Abdullahs and exposes their wrongdoings almost everyday and the PDP leadership has been quite successful in creating for itself a strong support-base in Kashmir. As for the Congress leadership, it has not reacted to what Kamaal publicly said about it at Akhnoor. Actually, the local Congress leadership doesn't have the mandate even to rebut the NC allegations. It always looks towards the party high command which paradoxically has put all its eggs in the NC basket.
The NC's anti-Congress, anti-PDP, anti-BJP and anti-NPP exercise is nothing but an exercise in futility. If the NC is to snatch the opposition's political space, it has no other alternative but to deliver and give up its divisive, communal and one community and one region-centric agenda. The manner in which the NC leadership is conducting will only lead to its political demise. |
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