Early Times Report
Srinagar, Aug 18: Senior PDP leader and Member Parliament Tariq Hamid Karra was conspicuously absent on Tuesday in the PDP-BJP government's Coordination Committee meeting of which he is a member.
The Coordination Committee met at its chairman and Deputy Chief Minister Dr Nirmal Singh's official residence after more than five months. Barring Karra, all members from both BJP and PDP attended the meeting. In fact, Karra has not taken part in any meeting of the committee till now.
"I was busy with my personal engagements so could not attended the meeting," Karra said from New Delhi.
Besides Nirmal Singh and Karra, the 10-member committee comprises PDP president Mehbooba Mufti, BJP state chief Jugal Kishore, Muzaffar Hussain Beigh, Shamsher Singh (all MPs), Choudhary Lal Singh, Abdul Rehman Veeri, Chewing Dorjee and Naeem Akhter (ministers in the PDP-BJP coalition government).
Sources, however, said that reason behind Karra skipping the CC meetings was not any personal engagement but his "resentment and unhappiness" with the party.
In the past Karra has expressed his unhappiness over the functioning of the coalition government and what he calls the BJP's "anti-Kashmir approach".
In fact, Karra has said that the 'Agenda of Alliance' between PDP and BJP has been just confined to paper and "right from the day one there has been no consonance between the functioning of the coalition government".
He has also said that his party's coalition with BJP was against the mood and conscience of the people of Kashmir and had urged PDP patron and Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed to pull out from the coalition as "BJP-led central government in Delhi was adopting an anti-Kashmir stand".
"If the government of India continues with same prejudiced approach towards Kashmir, PDP should rethink on its relation with the BJP as continuation in the coalition seems to be doing more damage to both Kashmiris and the party," Karra had said in a recent statement. |
