The ruling National Conference(NC) will never be part of NDA, the party working president and Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah categorically made it clear here on Sunday.
Omar does not see a situation in which NC, which has 3 Lok Sabha MPs and 2 Rajya Sabha MPs, would enter into “any sort of alliance” with the BJP in the future.
The chief minister said his party has only two options — the UPA and “in the past we have been a part of a United Front dispensation which is a sort of coming together of regional parties”. NDA was not an option, he added.
“The answer is never,” said Omar, who was a minister of state in the Vajpayee government, when asked whether NC will be part of NDA in the future.
Asked about NC’s previous alliance with the BJP in the NDA, Omar said, “NC’s relationship was not a relationship between the BJP and NC. It was largely between National Conference and Atal Bihari Vajpayee because he was seen as a unifying force who brought people together, who put aside regional issues in national interest, who actually looked at problems of the state and sought to resolve them.”
He mentioned that the railway line connecting Kashmir to rest of the country was a vision of Indira Gandhi which was fulfilled by Vajpayee when he declared the railway project as a national project of utmost importance.