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Various parties have started gearing up following Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's assertion that the government is committed to holding free and fair assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir later this year.
While the ruling National Conference will have a new president when Minister of State for External Affairs Omar Abdullah takes over from his father Farooq Abdullah on June 5, the Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party have started holding sessions with their grassroots workers.
The Congress has already sent Gulam Nabi Azad to Kashmir to spearhead the party's campaign. "Congress hopes to do better in the coming assembly elections because both the National Conference and Bhartiya Janata party have been exposed after their alliance at the Centre. Now BJP cannot claim that it is opposed to Article 370 and raise the slogan of ek vidhan, ek nishan (one Constitution, one Flag), which it used to do before," claimed Mangat Ram Sharma, former member of Parliament.
D K Kotwal, the state president of the BJP, said if the Centre really wants to hold free and fair elections then it should keep state government employees away from election duty.
"We would give Farooq Abdullah's party run for its money," Kotwal promised. He hoped that his party would do well in the Jammu region, which has 34 seats.
The BSP is looking to tie up with the BJP. Following the alliance between the two parties in Uttar Pradesh, the chances of the BJP and BSP coming together in Jammu and Kashmir have brightened. BSP chief Kanshi Ram was in Jammu last week trying to sort out the matter.
The National Conference is confident that it would win the elections. "I am going to gear up the party after I take over as the president of the National Conference," Omar Abdullah told rediff.com
The major concern of all the parties is the security of its candidates. "We expect the level of violence to go up as the polls draw nearer," said a senior police officer.
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