Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, July 22: Chief Minister and National Conference working president Omar Abdullah while addressing workers’ conventions in Gurez and Naidkhai-Sumbal, has said that NC would script a historic victory in the Assembly elections as the people of J&K would continue to repose their faith in a party that has not only proven to be a bulwark that protects the State’s political interests and regional aspirations but has also ensured unparalleled and unprecedented development across the length and breadth of the State in the last five and a half years.
He said that Assembly elections are based on matters of local governance and is in fact a test of approval for path-breaking initiatives and all efforts that have been put in to usher J&K towards a corrective era of growth and prosperity.
“National Conference while in the Government in the last five and a half years, has outperformed every past dispensation in ensuring pioneering steps were taken to make J&K self-reliant, developed and prosperous. Every single sector of governance – health, power production, education, infrastructure, roads and bridges, higher-education, tourism, rural development – has witnessed remarkable development and systemic up-gradation during the last five and a half years. And this development has not remained restricted to urban centers and files in Secretariat but has percolated to the grassroots level and has touched the day-to-day lives of common men and women living in some of the most far-flung areas of the State. This has in turn translated into unprecedented local development. It is based on the delivery of this perceptible change and development that National Conference will emerge victorious in the Assembly Elections”, Omar said, while addressing conventions at Gurez and Sumbal today.
Omar said that National Conference had faced numerous challenges, intrigues and political challenges in a history that spans more than eight decades and is full of instances when the party has defeated these intrigues and emerged victorious right after election results that were less than satisfactory for the party.
“We have come back and fought hard on our principles of dignity, integrity and inclusive politics every single time a political intrigue was hatched against us. This is the legacy of Sher-e-Kashmir Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah – your beloved leader who chose persecution and incarceration over the very idea of compromise. That legacy beats in our hearts and we will fight to gain a clear mandate with honor, prestige and a sense of selfless public service and nation building”, he added.
Omar said that PDP had openly taken issue to recent popular initiatives of public welfare and systemic reforms as the party was more concerned about partisan politics than the greater common good of the State and its people.
“Their grouse is not that these steps have been taken, nor do they have the courage to openly oppose the rationality of these measures. Their half-baked arguments are self-contradictory. Their problem is that it is National Conference and not PDP that has yet again fulfilled the demands of the people as the party has done in the past. They are more concerned about the political dividends of good-governance and people-friendly measures than about the logic and reason behind these initiatives. My Government will continue to be the Government of the common-man and will continue to work for your interests – as your interests and your interests alone dictate our policies”, the NC leader said.
Omar said that the pre-poll arrangement between Congress and National Conference in the recently concluded Parliament Elections proved to be dysfunctional in the Valley even though there was an effective and substantial transfer of National Conference votes to Congress candidates in Jammu Province.
“I had conveyed the decision of National Conference to contest the coming Assembly elections without any alliance to Congress president Sonia Gandhi well in time. This was the decision of our workers at the grassroots level and we are bound by the highest tenets of internal democracy to listen to your voice. You are the pillars of strength for us and you will decide how we go to the electoral battlefield. This commitment to the inclusion and empowerment of our grassroots workers has been validated in how we chose to listen to you while choosing our candidates for the Assembly Elections”, Omar said.
“Our support comes from the people – from their indomitable spirit of resilience, hope and courage. Their aspirations are paramount to us. While PDP remains to be a party found in New Delhi and operated by a remote-control by its patrons, National Conference is the party of the people – always has been and always will be. Go to the people with sincerity, confidence and the dream of a New Jammu and Kashmir in your hearts. Tell them about the historic spurt in development in the last five and a half years and tell them about my dream and my mission to make J&K the country’s most developed and self-reliant State”, Omar said adding that facts and figures of growth and development were available through RTI for every sector.
Referring to the exemplary performance of the State Government during the last over five years, Omar said that the extra-ordinary work done in the fields of Roads and Bridges, Communication, Education, Power Generation, PHE and Irrigation Sectors, Tourism, Agriculture, Science and Technology, Industries and Commerce had surpassed all past figures of growth. “The substantial average growth in the Per-Capita income of our citizens and the constant remarkable growth in the Gross State Domestic Product during the last five and a half years reflects the overall impetus that the State’s economy has received”, he said.
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