Irtif Lone
Elections were held to crown the 15th Prime Minister of India but it brought along some upheavals in the political circles of national as well as regional parties. A clean sweep by the Bhartiya Janta Party left many veteran politicians thinking. Even those who till recently had never lost, were made to eat the humble pie. For them, it’s even a mystery now. They couldn’t lose; they had inherited their constituency from forefathers. But as they say, they came and they conquered.
Like it happened in other states, the oldest national political party was reduced to such numbers that they being given the role of opposition had a question mark hanging over it. As happened in other parts, so did in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The ruling coalition of the state, National Conference- Congress alliance drastically failed to even get a single parliamentary seat. They were swept off the feet by BJP in Jammu and Ladakh and by PDP in Kashmir taking a share of three seats each. Not taking away the fact that it was less than 27% of electorate who voted. Rest preferred to stay home. And out of the people who voted there was a good number of NOTA as well. A huge number of 73% had stayed away from the polls and if the other side is to be believed, they boycotted the elections. With whatever minimum margins the other side won, the truth is they won and got more votes than the opponents. Even if it meant a 36 votes win, as happened in Ladakh. Something more astonishing in this election, considering the state of Jammu and Kashmir is that someone like Dr Farooq Abdullah lost and so did Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Well, it was only after this disaster which hit NC, that they were awakened. Within hours after the poll debacle the chief minister made his email id public and asked people to write to him. To tell him what had went wrong. Why was the party punished? And as per some news reports which quoted the chief minister, he actually received the e-mails, and I am sure people would have wrote to him. And thus came the time to scrap everything he had done in last 5 years. To start with, the employment policy was scrapped. The electricity bills might be coming down soon as well and the voices to give amnesty to people, mostly young boys who have been framed in various cases from protests to stone pelting are gaining momentum in the party.
Well, the pity is that it took them the shake in their chairs of power before they could think of some people friendly policies. Otherwise they had almost taken the people for granted. And, its somehow has proved that all they do is for the love of the power and not people or else they would have given up the government when hundreds of young boys were killed in 2009 and 2010. Even if they wish to scrap all their policies, no policy would bring to life the young boys who lost their lives.
Now that the assembly elections are on the way, the article 370 has become the point of discussion. Notwithstanding the fact, that if the abrogation of article 370 means that Kashmir is no more a part of India, most of the Kashmiri’s would want it to be abrogated. Probably the 73%, who did not vote, would stand for the abrogation of the article.
