The Congress has declined to take the bait from its ally National Conference to contest the Nagrota by-election following the regional party’s refusal to offer it a safe Rajya Sabha seat, highlighting growing strains within the alliance.
The NC had offered Nagrota to the Congress following differences over seat sharing for four Rajya Sabha seats for which elections will be held on October 24. The NC decided to contest three “safe” seats, leaving a “weak” seat for the Congress, but the latter showed no interest. This prompted the NC to field a candidate on the fourth seat as well.
The NC on Monday decided to field its district development council member Shamim Begum from Nagrota after the Congress refused to contest. Jammu and Kashmir is facing bypolls in the Valley’s Budgam and Jammu’s Nagrota on November 11.
The Budgam seat fell vacant after Omar Abdullah, who had contested last year’s Assembly polls from Ganderbal and Budgam, vacated Budgam and retained Ganderbal, his family bastion.
The election in Nagrota has been necessitated by the death of Omar’s friend turned BJP leader Devinder Rana, who is the brother of senior BJP central minister Jitendra Singh.
The bypolls will be the first test for the ruling NC and the Opposition BJP as both parties will wrestle to retain the seats.
Congress chief spokesperson Ravinder Sharma said his party had decided to leave the Nagrota seat to the NC, “keeping in view the larger interests and goals of defeating the BJP”.
Sharma said the decision was based on the fact that the NC had emerged as the runner-up in 2024 Assembly elections from Nagrota.
“Taking into account the broader parameters and principles of the coalition, the INC central leadership has decided to leave the (Nagrota) seat to its ally NC, in furtherance of larger interests and the goal of defeating the BJP,” Sharma said, suggesting there was no strain between the two parties.
Sharma, asked by The Telegraph about reports that his party was angry with the NC, said the people making such claims “could be right”.
“They (NC) had given us the choice but we felt that let them defeat the BJP,” he said, without elaborating.
Congress sources said the NC had offered the party the seat to convince voters that all was well in the alliance. “But the fact is all is not well in the alliance. Even with the NC’s support, it would have been difficult to win the Nagrota seat. Nagrota was no answer to refusing us a safe RS seat. There is a dominant feeling in our party that Omar sahab is cosying up too much to the BJP,” a leader said.
Omar played down the differences between the two parties. “We had offered the seat (Nagrota) to the Congress despite the fact we had won it in 2014. The Congress refused to field a candidate. Let it be like that. Whether it was the 2014 election or last year, the candidate was ours,” Omar told reporters here.