In post-Article 370 Kashmir, new dynamics operate and the nature of politics has changed. This has drastically reduced the scope for Abdullah, already hemmed in by his advanced age, to do his normal politics and get a majority of people to vote for his party, writes Riyaz Wani
A fortnight after Dr Farooq Abdullah, 85, suddenly announced his resignation as the president of National Conference, he was re-elected as the party president on December 5 as a consensus candidate. At the end of it, nobody was any wiser as to why Abdullah resigned in the first place and why he stood again for re-election, more so when one of the reasons he gave for quitting was to pave the way for the younger generation to take over.
National Conference general secretary Ali Mohammad Sagar said only Abdullah’s nomination was received till the last date of filing the nominations.
Abdullah has been the perpetual president of the NC since he took over the reins of the party after his father, the NC founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah passed away in 1982. His son Omar Abdullah has been the working president.
Abdullah’s continuation at the helm is certain to help the party in the run up to the Assembly elections likely to be held next year. The decks for Assembly elections have already been cleared after the Delimitation Commission submitted its final report about the increase in the number of the Assembly seats and the redrawing of electoral constituencies.
The National Conference, which is a part of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) with the PDP, has decided to contest elections alone, after indicating early this year that the alliance will fight polls jointly.
Though it may have appeared logical for the PAGD to decide to fight polls together, their experience of doing this during the District Development Council polls in 2020 didn’t inspire much confidence. The parties squabbled with one another over seat-sharing and later also fielded proxy candidates against each other. Though the PAGD still managed to win a majority of seats in the DDC elections, it left a bad taste in mouth among the partners. Soon after the elections were over, the People’s Conference led by Sajjad Gani Lone quit the PAGD citing the issue of proxy candidates. Or so he claimed. Lone has since gone about strengthening his party in the north.
However, the rest of the PAGD has stuck together. The parties might arrive at a post-poll alliance in case they have enough seats to form a government which looks unlikely considering the political scene in the union territory has become crowded now.
