NC begins firefight as Beg says all is not well in party

The ruling National Conference (NC) was in firefighting mode on Monday, a day after Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah said the party could have done without Mehboob Beg’s rejection of mandate from Anantnag.

In response to Beg’s allegations of NC being a corrupt lot, the ministers ignoring south Kashmir and the party failing to seek opinion from its leaders, NC general secretary Ali Mohammad Sagar said: “I spoke to Beg two days ago and offered him party candidature from his choicest segment and he insisted on Anantnag. He kept the party in the dark.”

All four leaders — Beg, Sheikh Ghulam Rasool, Muhammad Yusuf Bhat and Ajatshatru Singh — who deserted NC in the last two months have accused the leadership of failing to keep senior leaders in the loop over party matters.

Abdullah holds the post of working president in the party.

“We fail to understand what happened in just few hours and Beg decided to campaign in favour of the man (PDP patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed) whom he was calling a murderer of Kashmiris. Politics in our part of the world is fast losing ethical values,” said Sagar.

Beg also alleged that he was never heard by the party on the issues facing south Kashmir.

“After his loss in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, Beg had demanded political rehabilitation as a cabinet minister. Now where does the question of inter nal democracy and coterie system arise here?” said NC provincial president Nasir Aslam Wani.

“The NC does not need lectures on internal or external democracy as the party is based on the strongest ethics and values of democracy,” he added.

Wani expressed amazement at Beg’s remarks that only the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) could stop the march of BJP.

“A few months back Beg saw PDP as a face of BJP in J&K and today he thinks that PDP will stop BJP. This is a self-evident contradiction that Beg is welcome to clarify if he can,” Wani added.