Chief minister Omar Abdullah has been facing accusations of cosying up to the BJP after he rebuffed the Congress stand against electronic voting machines and lavished praise on the Union government’s Central Vista and new Parliament complex projects.
Omar had on Sunday criticised the INDIA parties for opposing the use of EVMs only when election results go against their expectations. He had gone on to ask why they contested elections if they did not trust the machines.
While the BJP and its Right-wing ecosystem have used these remarks to attack Rahul Gandhi, the Congress has suggested that Omar has changed after the recent Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir. Omar's National Conference and the Congress had fought the polls in an alliance.
“Why this approach to our partners after being CM?” Congress MP Manickam Tagore posted on X, sharing a video of Omar’s interview with PTI.
“It’s the Samajwadi Party, NCP, and Shiv Sena UBT that have spoken against EVMs. Please check your facts, CM @OmarAbdullah. The Congress CWC resolution clearly addresses the ECI only.”
Tagore posted a copy of a recent Congress Working Committee resolution that said the integrity of the entire electoral process was being compromised.
“Free and fair election is a constitutional mandate that is being called into serious question by the partisan functioning of the Election Commission,” said the resolution, passed after the INDIA bloc’s debacle in the Maharashtra polls.
In the interview with PTI, Omar appeared to target the Congress exclusively.
“I have no problem with you making an issue out of EVMs as long as you do it also when you win. The EVMs can’t only be a problem when you lose an election because they are the same EVMs,” Omar said.
“So when you get 100-plus MPs in Parliament using the same EVMs, you celebrate it as sort of a victory for your party. You can’t then, a few months later, turn around and say, ‘Hang on, actually we don’t like these EVMs’.”
He added: “How will you have a problem and continue fighting elections? If you don’t trust the machines, then you should not be fighting.”
Told that he sounded like a BJP spokesman, Omar denied he was one but went on to declare that what was happening with the Central Vista project was a “damn good thing” and that building a new Parliament building was an “excellent idea”. These projects have earned the BJP criticism from the Opposition.
BJP leader Sambit Patra used Omar’s remarks to target Rahul, saying that if he did not know how to fight elections, he should not contest polls.
In Kashmir, People’s Conference leader Sajad Lone said Omar was trying to please Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said this should be embarrassing for the voters who had elected him, seeing in him an anti-BJP symbol.
The National Conference won the Assembly elections this year on a pro-special-status and anti-BJP plank. Omar has since toned down his criticism of the BJP lest it hamper his party’s goal of the restoration of statehood.
National Conference spokesperson Imran Nabidefended Omar and said he had said the same things in the past too. Although Omar had defended EVMs in the past, he had occasionally expressed doubts about them, too.
“I’ve been extremely sceptical of EVM-related conspiracy theories but I’m beginning to question my unwavering faith in the machines & their infallibility,” he wrote on X in 2017, reacting to reports about some EVMs malfunctioning during the first phase of voting in that year’s Gujarat Assembly elections.
Omar had asked the Election Commission to clear the air over the controversy to restore the people’s trust in the voting machines.