National Conference was ready to form govt with BJP after 2014 J&K polls: Devender Singh Rana

“Jahan kehtey hein ki BJP ko mat layen. Jis Mufti sahib (late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed) ne election ladi aur kaha ki BJP ko bahar rakhengey, wohi Mufti Sahib ne bad mein BJP ke saath sarkar banaye (Here they ask people not to vote the BJP. Mufti sahib, who contested the elections and promised to keep the BJP out of power, later joined hands with it to form the government),” he added.

Reacting to the statement, NC president Dr Farooq Abdullah said that Rana was cooking up stories.

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The former chief minister said, “There was no question of forming the government as our government was voted out of power after the 2014 assembly elections.’’

“Na ji, bilkul nahi. Balki in logo ne, sab ne – Congress ne, National Conference ne – kaha tha Mufti sahib ko ke hum sab log aap ke saath kharey ho jatey hein, par Mufti sahib ne mana nahi. Mufti sahib ne BJP ka saath liya (Not at all. Rather all of us, including the Congress and the National Conference, had told Mufti sahib that we will support you in government formation, but he did not agree and had an alliance with the BJP),” Abdullah added.

Refuting Rana’s allegation, Abdullah said, “Ab woh duniya bhar ki kahaniya bana raha hai, Allah us pe reham karey (He is cooking up all sorts of stories now. Let God have mercy on him).”

In the 2014 assembly elections, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had won 28 seats, BJP 25, NC 15, and the Congress 12. Rana, who assumed charge as NC’s provincial president in the Jammu division in 2011 after relinquishing the office of political advisor to the then Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, had contested the 2014 assembly elections as an NC candidate from the Nagrota constituency.

He was one of the only three NC candidates who won in the Jammu division despite the BJP wave. The other two were Kamal Arora (Bishnah) and Javed Ahmed Rana (Mendhar). Rana and Arora joined the BJP last year.

Rana’s statement assumes significance as it has come at a time when the NC, PDP and the CPI(M) have formed the Gupkar alliance and they are trying to convince the electorate that they can keep the saffron party away from power in J&K.

Mufti Sayeed, who was sworn in as chief minister on March 1, 2015, at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had described the PDP-BJP coalition for government formation as the joining of the north pole and the south pole in the interest of the state and its people. He had justified his decision to form the government with the BJP by claiming that keeping the saffron party out of power would have meant ignoring the mandate of the Jammu region, which overwhelmingly voted for the BJP to make it the second-largest party after the PDP in the Assembly.

After his death in January 2016, his daughter Mehbooba Mufti was sworn in as J&K’s first woman chief minister in April that year after a brief spell of Governor’s rule. However, her government collapsed on June 19, 2018, after the BJP withdrew its support alleging deterioration in the law and order situation, among others.