Friendly contest on 5 seats; CPM, PP get one each
Fayaz Bukhari
SRINAGAR, Aug 26: After hectic parleys, the National Conference (NC) and Congress today finalised the modalities of the seat-sharing arrangement for their pre-poll alliance, ahead of the Assembly elections.
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In order to break the deadlock, the Congress leadership at Centre sent its senior leaders, KC Venugopal and Salman Khurshid to Srinagar to discuss seat-sharing with the NC.
The duo along with some of the local Congress leaders including G A Mir and others held a series of talks with NC president Dr Farooq Abdullah, vice president Omar Abdullah, and other leaders at their Gupkar residence.
After the day-long negotiations at National Conference president Farooq Abdullah’s residence ended, the two parties decided to contest 83 seats together – 51 would be fought by the NC and 32 by the Congress. One seat each has been set aside for the CPIM and the Panthers Party.
In five seats, where both NC and Congress have decided to field candidates. These five seats, on which the two parties could not come to an agreement, are Sopore, Banihal, Bhaderwah, Doda and Nagrota.
The Congress and NC leaders held discussions over seat sharing this afternoon and the first meeting ended at around 3 pm while in the evening; the leaders met again and finalized the seat-sharing.
NC president Dr Farooq Abdullah while addressing a press conference this evening said that the meetings were held in a cordial atmosphere. He said the INDI Alliance was formed at the national level with an aim to keep the forces hell-bent to divide the people on communal lines away. “We happily announce that we have reached a consensus in a cordial atmosphere,” he said.
Abdullah was accompanied by Congress leaders including its general secretary (Organization) K C Venugopal and JKPCC president Tariq Hameed Karra.
Venugopal said the parties have come together to fight unitedly and form the next dispensation in Jammu and Kashmir.
Tariq Hameed Karra while addressing the media persons said that the understanding between the two parties was done in the cordial atmosphere, adding that some of the contentious constituencies were also reviewed.
“We have agreed and narrowed down the number of the constituencies to five seats only where the friendly contest will be held between the two parties in a much disciplined manner from the both sides,” Karra said.
He, however, said that two seats including one each will be given to CPI (M) and Panthers Party. “We will start issuing the list of candidates from now,” he added.
The friendly contest will be on three seats of Doda region which include Banihal, from where former Congress president Vikar Rasool Wani is contesting and NC will be fielding Sajad Shaheen.
On Doda seat, NC is fielding Khalid Najeeb Suharwardy and Congress Riaz Ahmed Sheikh and on Bhaderwah seat, Congress party’s nominee was Nadeem Sharief and now NC has given ticket to Mehboob Iqbal.
On the BJP raising questions over Cong-NC alliance, Venugopal said that it is the same party, which was in alliance with NC and PDP earlier. However, he said that after forming the Government, there will be a common minimum programme. Every political party has its own agenda and raising issues over the agendas won’t work. He said that the BJP has cheated the people.
The NC vice president Omar Abdullah told reporters in the evening that it was difficult for both the parties to decide on the five seats including three from NC and two Congress, therefore, it was unanimously decided to go for the friendly elections there.
Omar said that there was no discussion on the manifesto. “At no point in time did the Congress party raise any objections to our manifesto. In the initial stage of the discussion at the local level, they had asked whether we would consider some sought of common minimum programme, we told them very clearly that the common minimum programme always arrives after you receive the verdict from the people,” he said.
“Therefore, we are fighting this election to win and if NC and Congress receive the support of the people then we will form a Common Minimum Programme for the governance for next five years. But we didn’t discuss our manifesto with Congress nor have we asked them what they are going to include in their manifesto,” he added.
While replying to a query, Omar stated that the statements from BJP are expected. “BJP should think about its own house first. It is for the first time that the BJP has deleted the list of candidates within 10 minutes. The situation is different at their office as the people even broke the chairs. They should look into their own house,” he said.
About the exclusion of PDP in the alliance, Omar said that the Congress is the main party in the INDI Alliance and it was their choice to meet NC and forge an alliance. “I am nobody to ask Congress about forging an alliance with PDP. The Congress didn’t talk about the party and thus the issue is over,” he said.
Omar said that without informing the alliance partners, CPI (M) had announced their candidate from Devsar and the senior leader Muhammad Yousuf Tarigami was informed about it by Dr Farooq Abdullah, who later decided to withdraw from the seat.
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