Three days after the Congress announced to contest the upcoming Assembly elections without entering into pre-poll alliance with the National Conference (NC), the ruling party came out with the second list of candidates, mostly for the Jammu region.
The NC’s first list of 32 candidates issued on July 15 was silent on several constituencies in Kashmir Valley where Congress candidates are in a formidable position. This led to speculations that the NC was awaiting Congress response on the pre-poll alliance. However, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah clarified that his party had decided to go for polls alone much before the Congress announced it in Jammu on Sunday.
Sources said NC President Dr Farooq Abdullah arrived here on Wednesday afternoon and immediately summoned the meeting of the party’s Parliamentary Board. “The meeting witnessed hectic deliberations on panels of candidates whose nominations are yet to be announced”, a party spokesman said.
Interestingly, 13 of the 14 candidates have been declared for constituencies in Jammu region. The party has decided to field senior leader Muhammad Shafi from border constituency of Uri in north Kashmir. Shafi, a former Rajya Sabha member, has represented Uri several times but failed to cruise through in 2002 and 2008 elections against Congress candidate Taj Mohiuddin.
The NC has kept the suspense over the constituency where Chief Minister Omar Abdullah will be fielded. The party insiders say that Abdullah is not keen to contest from his traditional Gandarbal constituency. Dr. Farooq Abdullah who lost the lok Sabha election against the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, is also not keen to contest the Assembly polls.
The upcoming election would be the toughest battle for the ruling party that witnessed its declining graph in the parliamentary polls.
Ever since the humiliating defeat in the polls, especially the first electoral defeat of Dr Abdullah, Chief Minister is attempting to reduce the trust deficit with the people by announcing freebies. He has enhanced retirement age of the government employees by two years bringing them at par with the central government employees, cancelled the faulty employment policy of the government and created hundreds of vacancies in the departments.