Srinagar: The coming together of the Congress and the National Conference (NC) for the upcoming assembly election marks the revival of a historical alliance and could also be the start of worries for the Bhartiya Janta Party in Jammu and Kashmir.
A day ago, Congress rushed its senior leaders Salman Khurshid and K.C. Venugopal to Srinagar, where they spent a day in negotiations at the NC president Farooq Abdullah’s residence. Today, August 26, is the last date for filing of nomination papers for the first phase of elections which will be held on September 18.
Of the total number of seats going to polls on the date, 16 assembly constituencies are in Kashmir and eight fall in Jammu.
Later, the two parties jointly announced the seat-sharing agreement under which the NC will contest a majority of 51 seats while the Congress candidates will fight on 32 seats.
Last week, Abdullah, the NC president, had told the media that the two parties had sealed the deal for a pre-poll pact on all the 90 assembly seats of Jammu and Kashmir.
The two parties have, however, failed to reach a consensus on five assembly segments of Sopore in Kashmir Valley and Banihal, Bhaderwah, Doda and Nagrota in Jammu. Abdullah and other leaders said that these five seats will see a “friendly contest” between the two parties.
Sources said that both parties’ local leadership in all the five constituencies refused to concede ground, arguing that they had better prospects at winning than the other.
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“There were disagreements between the two sides in few other constituencies such as Kishtwar in Chenab Valley but the senior leaders ironed them out and a message has been sent out to the local leadership of both the parties that they will have to fight the election together as a unit,” a source said, adding that local factors could spoil the chances of vote consolidation on the day of election.
Besides, the alliance has also allotted one seat each for its constituents Communist Party of India (M) and J&K Panthers Party.
Not a bed of roses
Political analysts believe that the NC-Congress alliance could emerge as a single largest bloc in Jammu and Kashmir when the election results are out but the trends of the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections suggest that the alliance is unlikely to come to power on its own.
In 2008, the two parties came together for a post-poll alliance with a cumulative strength of 45 members in the assembly of 87 in the aftermath of a violent public agitation against the transfer of a tract of land in Kashmir for Shri Amarnath Board. The agitation led to the toppling of the Congress-Peoples Democratic Party government headed by Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Following a pre-poll alliance earlier the year, the Congress was defeated by the BJP in both the Lok Sabha seats in Jammu region while the National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah suffered a shocking loss in north Kashmir’s Baramulla constituency, the only one faced by the party on three parliamentary seats it contested in Kashmir Valley.
Although the BJP has been marred by internal power struggles in some constituencies of Jammu, analysts believe that the party is likely to hold the upper hand over the Congress in J&K’s Hindu heartland which is still widely expected to retain its saffron stronghold tag.
On the other hand, the NC may have to pay the price of the proliferation of independent voices and political parties in Jammu and Kashmir following the reading down of Article 370, the rise of the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) led by Engineer Rashid and the announcement by Jamaat-e-Islami that it could enter the political fray.
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In such a scenario, the splintering of votes will force the oldest political party of Jammu and Kashmir to rely on support from other parties and independent candidates in order to form the government.
Could NC swing?
In the post-poll scenario, an alliance between the NC and the BJP is also not ruled out. The NC was part of the BJP-led NDA government at the centre headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in which Omar Abdullah was a junior minister from July 23, 2001, to December 23, 2002.
“If the Congress fails in Jammu again, the NC will have to look for allies. The party can’t afford to sit in the opposition at this crucial juncture in J&K’s history. If the PDP could join hands with the BJP in 2014 after running an anti-BJP campaign, anything is possible,” said a Srinagar-based analyst who did not want to be named.
But much of what happens to the electoral arithmetic will depend on October 4 when the Election Commission is scheduled to announce the results of the assembly election.
Although the situation is presently in the realm of speculation, it remains to be seen whether there will be a repeat of the coming together of ‘North Pole and South Pole’ in Jammu and Kashmir once the UT’s legislature convenes later this year or if arm-twisting tactics would be deployed in the country’s only Muslim-majority region to fulfil one party’s political ambitions.
