New Delhi: The Congress was upbeat over National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders joining the grand old party ahead of the Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir and said that people in the UT trusted that LoP Rahul Gandhi would raise their voices in Parliament.
On September 4, Rahul Gandhi will kick off the Congress's election campaign by rallying support for Vikar Rasool Wani in the Banihal constituency and Ghulam Ahmed Mir in the Dooru constituency, both of whom are former Jammu & Kashmir unit chiefs.
Before his visit, several leaders of the NC and the PDP, the two strong regional players in Kashmir, joined the Congress. These included NC leader and ex-minister Jagjeevan Lal, PDP leader Suhail Bukhari, Apni Party leader and ex-MLA Mumtaz Khan, ex-MLA and Apni Party leader Abdul Rahim Rather, social activist Irfan Hafiz Lone joined the Congress in the presence of newly appointed PCC chief Tariq Hameed Karra over the past few days.
In Banihal, the entire local unit of PDP joined Congress to back Vikar.
“It is because these leaders have sensed that the public mood is in favour of the grand old party. There is public pressure on these politicians. The people here have suffered injustice under the Modi government at the Centre and now all eyes are on the Congress. They believe that Rahul Gandhi, who is the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha can deliver justice to them and will raise their voice in Parliament. Rahul Gandhi is the most popular leader in J&K today because he is talking about minorities, students and jobless youth and this message is going down among the voters,” AICC functionary Ghulam Ahmed Mir told ETV Bharat.
According to the AICC functionary, the Congress was confident of fighting the Assembly elections on its own but still opted to have an alliance with the NC, Panthers party and the CPI-M.
“In our survey, we were confident of fighting alone but chose to go with the alliance given the popularity of the INDIA bloc in the national elections,” said Mir.
According to the AICC functionary, the DPAP floated by ex-Congress Ghulam Nabi Azad in 2022 was no threat to Congress as the new political outfit had lost its steam.
“Leaders like GM Saroori, Majid Wani, Jugal Kishore and Taj Mohiuddin who had left the Congress to join DPAP have all left the new party and are contesting as independents. That is because they believe that neither Azad nor his party can get them votes. We don’t know whether Azad who is having health issues will campaign or not but even if he does there will be no impact on the ground,” said Mir.
J&K unit chief Tariq Hameed Karra, who will contest from the Central Shalteng seat, said the Congress was ready to field candidates on all 90 assembly seats but decided to settle for 32 seats for the sake of the INDIA bloc. Both the NC and Congress will field candidates on six seats as part of friendly fights with the NC getting 51 seats, Panthers Party 1 and CPI-M one seat each.
