Prof Hari Om
Gone are the days when Kashmir’s premier religio-political organization, National Conference (NC), would play all the shots, capture all or nearly all the assembly seats in Kashmir, dominate Secretariat, Legislature and Government and exercise absolute, unbridled and extraordinary legislative, executive, financial and residuary powers with New Delhi always at its beck and call. Such was the political status of the NC till October 2002, when its decline started in a highly dramatic manner. Leave aside the periods – 1965 to 1975, 1984 to 1987 and January 19, 1990 to October 9, 1996 – when the NC was out of power not because it had suffered electoral reverses but because Prime Minister L B Shastri converted NC into Congress in 1965, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dethroned Farooq Abdullah in 1984 for security reasons and Farooq Abdullah fled to London on January 19, 1990 after causing wholesale exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, Jammu Dogras and thousands of Punjabis from Kashmir to escape the terrorists’ wrath. Terrorists had been after him since 1987, when Rajiv Gandhi-Farooq Abdullah power-sharing accord led to the wholesale rigging of assembly elections. As said, the NC started crumbling in 2002. That year, Farooq Abdullah stepped down from the NC’s president post. Greenhorn-in-politics Farooq Abdullah’s son, Omar Abdullah, became the party chief. All this happened just on the eve assembly elections. In 1996, the NC under the leadership of Farooq Abdullah won two-third majority in the 87-member House. In fact, it won 57 seats, including 12 from Jammu province. And, in 2002, the tally of the NC, which fought the elections under the leadership of Omar Abdullah, came down to just 28. It won only 18 seats out of 47 in Kashmir province, despite the fact that it contested the polls on highly divisive planks. More significantly, Omar Abdullah himself suffered a humiliating defeat in the Ganderbal constituency, which was considered the NC’s pocket borough. It’s the newly-founded People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which upset the NC’s applecart. The PDP won 16 seats – all from Kashmir – and formed government in alliance with the Congress (20 seats), Panthers Party (4 seats), CPIM (2 seats) and PDP (2 seats).
The NC again contested the 2008 assembly elections under the leadership of Omar Abdullah but failed to improve the party’s tally even by one seat. It again won 28 seats, as against the PDP’s tally of 21 seats, all from Kashmir. Omar Abdullah, who this time could manage to win the election from the Ganderbal constituency, was appointed J&K Chief Minister by Sonia Gandhi whose Congress had won 17 seats, mostly from Jammu province. The Omar Abdullah’s 6-year reign was one of tensions, anarchy, chaos, disturbances, threats to national security, bitter inter-regional relations, regrouping of terror and separatist outfits and bad centre-state relations as Omar Abdullah as CM repeatedly questioned the political status of J&K vis-à-vis India, opposed tooth and nail the AFSPA/institution of the Indian Army and declared again and again that “political package, and not the financial and employment packages, alone could not resolve the political issue of Kashmir”. By political package, he meant greater autonomy for J&K or limited accession of J&K with India. 2014 turned out to be the worst-ever year for the NC, notwithstanding the fact that the NC contested the general elections and the assembly elections under the leadership of Farooq Abdullah. The NC suffered humiliating defeats in all the three Lok Sabha seats in Kashmir. Farooq Abdullah himself suffered a defeat in the Srinagar Parliamentary constituency. It’s his first-ever defeat. The PDP won all the three seats. The NC had not contested Lok Sabha elections in Jammu province. It had left both the seats in Jammu province for the Congress, which also suffered ignominious defeat at the hands of the BJP. The story of the NC’s performance in the assembly elections was also pathetic. It could win only 15 seats, as against its tally of 28 in 2002 and 2008. Farooq Abdullah’s brother and former minister Mustafa Kamal, who used to declare day in and day out that “only a Muslim could become J&K Chief Minister as it’s a Muslim-majority state”, lost his security deposit.
He came fifth. And, the not-so-confident Omar Abdullah, who had contested assembly election from two “safe seats” (Sonawar and Beerwah) in Kashmir, suffered humiliating defeat in the Sonawar constituency and won from the Beerwah constituency by a slender margin of less than 100 votes. Of course, the NC won all the three Lok Sabha seats in 2019 but the victories were not inspiring for it. That the NC could win the election only by default could be seen from the fact that it could get only 7.87 per cent votes, as against the BJP’s 46.24 per cent votes and the Congress’s 28.38 per cent votes. As for Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP, which suffered only defeats all across J&K, its vote share was a paltry 3.38 per cent.
On Friday, November 18, an important development took place in Kashmir. The case in point is that 85-year-old Farooq Abdullah announced that he will not contest the elections for the post of party president. Many reports said that he decided to hold aloof because of age factor. But one report said that the “resignation came a day after a man heckled Farooq Abdullah in downtown Srinagar, questioning his inability to restore Article 370, which was abrogated by the Centre in 2019”. Whatever the truth, the fact remains that Farooq Abdullah has told his senior colleagues that he will not contest the election and it’s for the delegates to elect a competent person as new president of the party. The party general secretary, Ali Mohammad Sagar, on November 18 itself issued an election schedule for the presidential election. If all goes well, the election would be held on December 5. And, there are reasons to believe that Omar Abdullah will be elected, may be unopposed. After all, the NC is not a party; it’s a private company launched way back in 1932 by Sheikh Abdullah, grandfather of Omar Abdullah. Will the new President be able to restore the ground it lost over the years? Only time will tell.