When Valley joins the campaign

SRINAGAR, URI: The poll fervour from the Congress headquarters on Maulana Azad Road in Srinagar has shifted to a famous city hotel where the Congress has established its election control room.

This spacious room now looks like a party office with Congress banners, posters, handbills and buntings splashed in every corner of the room. The telephone rings incessantly with workers and candidates seeking information about poll material and campaign programmes.

Dozens of copies of the Congress manifesto are neatly stacked in one corner of the room. The Central high command had sent 10,000 copies for local distribution. “Right now we are distributing poll material and manifesto copies in all the constituencies,” says Congress vice president Ghulam Nabi Monga, while handing a bundle of colourful posters to a candidate from south Kashmir.

The large posters carry pictures of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and JKPCC president Saif-ud-din Soz.

Each Congress contestant receives 2,000 posters and 4,000 flags with the party symbol etched on them. Candidates are also being provided 3,000 cloth banners with slogans of “peace” and “development” written on them in English and Urdu. Each candidate also gets 5,000 paper caps and cloth mufflers with pictures of Sonia Gandhi. Small cardboard badges and stickers with the party symbol printed on them are much in demand.

Khushyun da mausum mudana hain, har gareeb di madat hurn karni hain, sonri shafi sahib di saprasti hain, NC sadi jaggi taqdeer hurn” (The season of joy is coming here, now we have to help the poor, the leadership of Shafi sahib is praiseworthy, the NC will change our destiny).

So goes a pahari song played at almost all the National Conference poll rallies in north Kashmir’s Uri constituency that is witnessing an extraordinary poll campaign.

Vehicles, from Sumos to trucks, hired by the NC, travel over the hilly terrain of this border constituency. They are fitted with microphones, from which pahari songs praising the NC and its candidate Mohammad Shafi Uri blare out. The songs have been composed by famous pahari singer, Tariq Pardesi.

Says Advocate Mohammad Haneef Dilber, chief polling agent of National Conference Uri candidate: “We had made around 750 CDs and people have locally copied it.”

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