PDP patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed on Wednesday alleged that former Congress-led UPA government at the Centre used Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru as a scapegoat in its failed bid to stop the rise of BJP at the national level.

"Congress played a counter-communal card in its failed bid to stop the rise of BJP at the national level and they used Afzal Guru as a scapegoat," Sayeed said while addressing an election rally in Dooru assembly segment of south Kashmir. The Peoples Democratic Party leader said Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who owed his "survival" in 2010 and 2011 to Congress, readily agreed to hanging Guru out of turn in a manner that does not do any good to the image of the country as a secular democracy where rule of law is supreme.

"Congress and National Conference just for their partisan politics sacrificed the image of the country and subverted its system by not allowing Guru's family to have at least last minute meeting with him," he said.He said ideologically Congress never tried to rise up to the BJP but instead made compromise after compromise to seek survival in power which ultimately demolished it at the national level and in the state it was reduced to hand-maiden of Omar Abdullah.

The former Chief Minister said Congress and National Conference are to be equally blamed for landing Jammu and Kashmir in one of the worst "governance crisis" of its history. "It was because of Congress abandoning its inclusive agenda at the national level and its ministers indulging in open loot and frauds in the state that space for emergence of BJP was created in J&K," Sayeed said.

Sayeed said Omar on the strength of his friendship with Congress Vice president Rahul Gandhi had his way on all matters without being able to do anything constructive for the state. During the past six years, he said the functionaries of NC-Congress coalition worked as a "mutual benefit society" which had no direction and no Common Minimum Programme (CMP) for the welfare of the people.

The PDP patron said it was the Congress high command and its ministers in the coalition government who bailed out Omar Abdullah in 2010 when hundreds of youth were killed and thousands framed in false charges by his government. "Similarly in 2011 Haji Yousuf case it was a Congress minister who supported Omar Abdullah more than his NC colleagues," he said. Sayeed said PDP would try to form a government that would be inclusive and would reflect the urges and aspirations of all sections of the society across all the regions of the state.