Srinagar: Accepting the defeat of the coalition candidates with ‘humility’ Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, Friday said that he can’t blame Congress party for the defeat as his party National Conference failed to get votes where its position was stable and robust. Addressing a press conference in at his Gupkar residence after the debacle of Alliance candidates in Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah said that he had never expected one-sided results. We failed to get votes even from those segments where we had worked hard on development,” he said adding that he aceeptst the defeat with humility. While congratulating the victorious candidates of PDP and BJP, Omar Abdullah said that his party fought elections on national issues while PDP raised local issues like hike in electricity and hanging of Afzal Guroo. “I don’t know whether the issue related to the hanging of Afzal Guroo played a role in our defeat or not but we will analyze the causes of our debacle,” he said. “I congratulate PDP and BJP and hope that they represent wishes of people in the parliament. After the defeat it is the discretion of my party whether it would continue with him as the chief minister or not. It is my defeat as the Chief Minister, Omar said, “adding that he had been always been a loyal soldier of NC. Omar said Congress can’t be solely blamed for the trouncing. He said that the outcome of the results would not make the National Conference irrelevant. Acknowledging that he was yet to come to terms with the poll results, Omar said it was time for self-introspection for the party and learn quick lessons with assembly elections being round the corner. “I am still coming to terms with the results. We will have to go segment wise, assembly wise. There are assembly segments where we have taken a beating. There are lessons to be learnt. In constituencies where development has taken in the last five-and-a-half years, we have not won,” Omar said adding that this is not the end of NC and it will come back. “We have learnt from the last polls, when we were defeated in 2002”. He said the main opposition PDP, which has won the three seats, did not become irrelevant when they had lost in the last Parliamentary polls,” he said. Earlier after watching the early trends from different parts of the country, Omar Abdullah had said on his twitter site: “I imagined a worst case scenario but early trends are worse than that. Let’s hope this trend reverses as the count progresses.” (CNS)
Alliance white wash Omar accepts defeat as Chief Minister
