Omar Abdullah, Vice President of the National Conference
Photo: PTI
KEY POINTS
- While the National Conference will contest 51 of the 90 seats, the Congress will fight for 32.
- North Carolina and Congress have decided to hold “friendly fights” for some seats.
- Abdullah failed to answer the question of who will be the Chief Minister if the NC-Congress alliance wins the elections.
New Delhi: National Conference Vice President Omar Abdullah Abdullah spoke openly about his party’s alliance with the Congress for the upcoming Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections, saying that he had to give up seats to forge the alliance. Abdullah said that such an adjustment must be made in any seat-sharing agreement and that having an agreement was “too important to allow five or six seats to jeopardise the whole thing”.
Omar Abdullah, in an interview with ANI, claimed that without any pre-poll alliance, the parties could end up in a “Madhya Pradesh-like situation.” He said the National Conference was preparing to contest all the seats before the seat-sharing agreement with the Congress.
“Every alliance is a compromise. We had prepared candidates for every seat. I am not sure if the Congress would have done the same, but I assume they would have. Obviously we have conceded seats for which we had prepared people, for which we felt we were in a good position to at least give a good fight. But yes, in any distribution of seats you have to concede seats and we did,” said Omar Abdullah.
“Having an alliance was too important to allow five or six seats to jeopardise the whole issue. We could have ended up with a situation like Madhya Pradesh, where the Congress would have gone it alone because they could not agree on six or seven seats for the Samajwadi Party,” he added.
Omar Abdullah did not respond to the question of who will be the Chief Minister if the NC-Congress alliance wins the elections.
North Carolina Congressional Seat Allocation Agreement
The Congress and the National Conference have signed an alliance ahead of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections. While the National Congress will contest 51 of the 90 seats, the Congress will fight for 32, and two parties have also agreed to a friendly contest for some seats. Some seats have been reserved for smaller parties.
The seat distribution was finalised after a meeting between Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, MP and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, Omar Abdullah and National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah.
Elections in Jammu and Kashmir will be held in three phases on September 18, 25 and October 1. Votes will be counted on October 8.
Disclaimer:
The information contained in this post is for general information purposes only. We make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the post for any purpose.
We respect the intellectual property rights of content creators. If you are the owner of any material featured on our website and have concerns about its use, please contact us. We are committed to addressing any copyright issues promptly and will remove any material within 2 days of receiving a request from the rightful owner.