Omar slams door on NDA, opens a window to Sonia

While he clarified that it did not mean his party was going with the Congress, Omar indicated the NC was keeping its options open on aligning with any front. ‘‘An alliance is not possible because the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is with them…Let the result come out, the party will decide about its future plans then.’’

While father Farooq Abdullah has been talking of a government by a secular democratic alliance at the Centre, Omar admitted that most of the parties—including the Left—had now rejected the possibility of any such alliance and believed that there would be either a BJP-led or a Congress-led set-up.

Talking about the issue of foreign origin of the Congress president, the junior Abdullah pointed out: ‘‘The NDA made this an issue in the elections. They were very fast to pass POTA in Parliament, if they were so worried abut the foreign origin issue, they would have come out with a law in Parliament during their tenure.’’ According to Omar, the NC’s problem with the NDA was that it didn’t seem to care about certain issues which were important for the party.

Omar denied receiving any overtures from the BJP and said that while a decision in this regard would be taken only by the NC working committee, he felt his party had been used by the NDA.

The NC president believes the BJP covertly helped the Mufti Mohammed Sayeed-led PDP defeat the NC in the assembly election two years ago. ‘‘That time we were told it was all done in national interest. What about the interest of the NC?’’ he asks.

Hoping that parliamentary elections in the state would go in favour of his party, Omar said the defeat of Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh showed that governments should work for basic needs of the people like water, power, roads and food to win their support.

‘‘The PDP-led government (led by CM Mufti Mohammad Sayeed) has also failed on this issue. They have only concentrated on the Uri-Muzaffarabad road and nothing else,” Abdullah said.