Srinagar: Dr Farooq Abdullah, the president of the National Conference and former chief minister of J&K announced on Thursday that the Congress and his party, the National Conference ( NC), had finalised their pre-election alliance and that the paperwork was in the last stages of completion.
“Alliance on all 90 Assembly seats between the two parties has been formed. Paperwork to be finalised by tonight. Congress, NC and CPI(M) are together. We will work together and fight the elections. We are hopeful that statehood will be returned. No doors are closed for anyone,” said Dr Abdullah.
He told reporters that an alliance had been formed and that the parties would issue mandates to their candidates in phases.
Earlier, Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge called on Dr Farooq Abdullah at his high-security Gupkar Road residence here.
His son, the former chief minister and NC vice president Omar Abdullah, was also present during the meeting at his father’s residence.
After the meeting, Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge and K.C. Venugopal met the Congress leaders and workers at a hotel in Srinagar.
Addressing the Congress workers, Rahul Gandhi said, “You are not workers; you are family. As soon as we learned that elections were going to be held, we decided to come to Jammu and Kashmir because we wanted to send a message to the people that for us, the representation of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and their statehood is the most important thing.”
“In In India’s history, after Independence, many union territories were converted into states, but there is only one example of statehood being taken away and a union territory being created. This has never happened before, and we want to send the message that the representation of the people of Jammu and Kashmir is important—it is important for us, and it is important for the country,” Gandhi said.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge told the workers, “We want to take the entire opposition along.” He said that Congress is committed to ensuring the return of Statehood.
He said that in J&K, BJP couldn’t ensure elections. “BJP announced polls under pressure in the wake of Supreme Court directions. I want to put it on record that the BJP can’t suppress the peoples’ voices anymore in J&K. Congress is committed to working for the welfare of the people of J&K. The UT has witnessed unprecedented unemployment. Tall claims of BJP that post Article 370, terrorism has been wiped out in J&K have fallen flat. Infiltration has gone up, and terrorism incidents have also witnessed a spike,” he said.
Rahul Gandhi later left for the Jammu division, where he will address workers and interact with party workers and leaders regarding the upcoming Assembly elections.
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–IANS
