Former Jammu & Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah, whose party National Conference fought along with PDP under People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration, spoke to Rohan Dua on their recent performance in the DDC polls. Excerpts from the interaction:Elections to Districts Development Councils (DDCs) in J&K were already announced when PADG, or Gupkar Alliance, was formed. How do you look at the results now? It was an uphill battle, for many reasons. All of us on this side of the aisle, in the PAGD alliance, were all emerging out of various lengths of detention, and political activity had been non-existent for us. None of us had fought polls together. We were traditional rivals as recently as the 2019 Lok Saba where we fought hammer and tong. It wasn’t even like the assembly polls where 87 seats were to be decided; here, we had 280 seats. There were varying degrees of acceptance. We had hurdles too, such as our candidates being taken citing security threats. Mehbooba, I and others took a conscious decision to not campaign as we didn’t want sympathy votes around us.
Your party has done better than PDP (27) and PAGD allies like Sajjad Lone’s JKPC (8). PDP and Congress (26) are behind the tally of Independents (49). There are lessons to be learned for each political party. It’s not for me to tell PDP and Congress how they should interpret these results. I know how I would look at these results — that is areas where NC has done well and areas where we were expected to do better. I would hope there are lessons that PDP and Congress would take well. One of the problems we faced in seat-sharing discussions is that parties may have [more] ambitious assessments of public support than ground realities actually conveyed.
How do you look back at your own detention and that of other leaders after August 5, 2019? There was no justification. Specially the grounds. I was detained because of perception over a boycott call. The moment we went to challenge the detention, the government withdrew our detentions and set us free. I would say I was still better off even in isolation. Others went to Agra and other parts of UP. Much water has flowed under the bridge now since then. We move on. But we would hope the voice of the people of J&K would be heard. We will look for solutions within the four walls of the Constitution. Some wanted us to boycott the polls; we didn’t.
How do you look at BJP’s 3 wins in the Valley, which they say would initiate inroads in Kashmir? If their three seats is important, then our 35 seats in Jammu is equally important. People say we are the only party of Kashmiri Muslims, but we did well in Jammu too.
With the success of the DDC polls, would you press for assembly polls in J&K ever, with UT status? I don’t speculate on any such move in near future. I would only focus on building our alliance. DDC polls have pushed assembly polls much away and we are in the middle of the delimitation commission. Implementation would take time.