After losing the poll battle and tasting ‘humiliating’ defeat on all six lok Sabha seats in Jammu & Kashmir, the alliance partners — Congress and the National Conference have started showing symptoms of acute ‘trust deficit’ syndrome.
Despite running a ‘vitriolic’ joint election campaign targeting BJP’s PM nominee Narendra Modi to hide their poor track record of governance, the alliance partners are now busy measuring swords to cut each other to size ahead of facing angry voters again during Assembly polls due in November 2014.
Taking responsibility of the poll debacle, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has set out on course correction and announced certain measures on his micro blogging site but there is no end to the bitter war of words between the alliance leaders.
Instead of finding time for self introspection and some genuine soul searching, they have started washing their dirty linen in public. Two Union Ministers Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad tasted defeat owing to poor coordination between the partners on ground zero.
Azad bore the brunt of complete polarisation of votes in erstwhile Doda and Kathua district, while Abdullah paid the price for poor governance of Omar-led alliance Government. To satisfy their bruised ‘egos’, the alliance leaders have started taking pot shots at each other to deflect the blame from their own heads.
Omar’s close aide and Provincial president, Kashmir division, Nasir Aslam Wani has already triggered a war of words by claiming that an alliance with Congress proved disastrous for his party in the Kashmir valley. He even went on to criticise PCC chief Saif-u-Din Soz for his remarks against the NC and alleged that Soz tried to keep both the NC and PDP in good humour during the campaigning in the State.
In response JKPCC spokesperson Ravinder Sharma on Sunday hit back asking who forced NC to go for alliance. In a written statement he said it is well known in political circles who pressed hard for a pre-poll alliance in the just concluded lok Sabha elections.
He said that if the pre-poll alliance was not in the interests of our coalition partner, they could have opted for the other course. The PCC chief had earlier blamed the National Conference claiming that there was surely a deep hatred against the National Conference in Valley.
Significantly, before starting their 2014 lok Sabha election campaign, the alliance partners were upbeat and optimistic of winning all six lok Sabha seats in the State.
Star campaigners Ghulam Nabi Azad, Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Saif-ud-Din Soz worked hard but failed to earn sympathy of the voters.In frustration some of these leaders stooped so low while indulging in Modi bashing but successfully managed to hide their own inadequacies and poor track record of governance.
The victory margins of the BJP and the PDP candidates in Jammu and Kashmir region over their rival candidates have completely exposed the ugly face of the Omar Abdullah-led alliance Government in Jammu & Kashmir. The stalwarts not only failed to garner votes in support of joint candidates but also failed to transfer votes in support of alliance candidates in the Valley.
A close look at the total vote share, distributed Assembly segment wise, clearly reveal the NC failed to motivate their traditional voters in support of the Congress candidate on two lok Sabha seats in Jammu and the same trend continued in Kashmir valley where the Congress was blamed for not supporting the NC candidates.
2009 & 2014 results: A comparision
* Comparison between 2009 and 2014 lok Sabha results clearly reveals that in the last five years the new alliance partners have failed to strengthen their bond
* This is inferred from the voting trends across different Assembly segments on both the parliamentary seats where Congress candidates were supported by the National Conference
* In 2009 lok Sabha polls, Congress candidates had won 6,13,945 votes from two lok Sabha seats in Jammu province
* In 2014, the total vote share of the Congress candidates increased to 7,89,108 votes, recording a jump of 1,75,168 votes only. The Congress candidate from Jammu-Poonch seat polled less votes than 2009 polls. In 2009, Ml Sharma had polled 3,82,092 votes and in 2014 he polled 3,62,715 votes, 19,377 less than 2009 lok Sabha elections
* In contrast, BJP candidates had polled 4,79,027 votes in 2009 lok Sabha polls in Jammu region, while in 2014 BJP garnered 11,07,364 votes, recording a jump of 6,28,337 votes. BJP candidate had lost Udhampur seat by over 13,000 votes, but this time Azad lost the seat by over 60,000 votes, while the Congress lost Jammu seat by a margin of 2.52 lakh votes
* PDP secured 1,99,015 votes in 2014 lok Sabha polls from two lok Sabha seats in Jammu