Last week, the much anticipated press conference of Jammu Kashmir National Conference leader Omar Abdullah was finally done which buried all hopes of continued alliance of PAGD between the People’s Democratic Party and other small regional parties along with JKNC. Omar Abdullah unilaterally decided to fight the Lok Sabha elections on all three seats of Kashmir while it was open to have consensus with INDIA for two seats of Jammu and one seat of Ladakh regions. The party vice president , however showed no interest in discussing the seat sharing formula with PDP, the second largest regional party of the Union Territory.
The growing discomfort of Omar Abdullah and his party with the PAGD over the past sometime had eventually forced his party to pull out from the alliance though they have not made a formal statement in the press conference. But JKNC’s decision to go all alone in the Lok Sabha polls have raised many questions of huddling people under its umbrella of PAGD to fight for ‘larger issues’.
PAGD was formed in 2019 after Union Government in Jammu and Kashmir abrogated Article 370 and stripped it’s people of dual citizenship followed by the downgrading of state into two UTs. The regional parties including JKNC, PDP, PC, CPIM joined hands and decided to take on BJP to thwart it from imposing it’s agenda on Kashmir and fight to retrieve the lost statehood and secure jobs and land.
Whatever was told people by the conglomerate have proven only a political gimmick to avoid the political pressures that New Delhi have been building over them. There have been corruption cases, and the growing dissent against the regional political parties and the BJP was exploiting the situation in its favour.
The massive rebooting of Jammu and Kashmir by Prime Minister Narendra Modi have made these parties insecure that apparently forced them to join hands to survive the phase. As the dust settled and the elections are approaching these parties have yet again shown their true faces to the people. If these parties failed to build consensus on just three assembly seats, how it is possible to see them joining hands to fight for larger issues which according them are beneficial to the people of J&K.
