news details |
|
|
| Govt formation: Signals from Srinagar, Amritsar | | | ET Report
Jammu, Feb 29: Three significant political developments took place on Sunday. Two took place in Kashmir' Anantnag and Kulgam districts and the third one took place in the Punjab's holy City of Amritsar.
At Anantnag, PDP president Mehbooba Mufti addressed her party workers and launched membership drive in the area, considered a stronghold of late Mufti Sayeed. This was not important. But very significant was her announcement that she would either go to the people to seek a fresh mandate or form Government with the BJP on her own terms and conditions. She made it loud and clear that she was not hankering after the Chief Minister's chair. In fact, she said that she was not power hungry and that she will accept the office of Chief Minister only if she was convinced that she was able to deliver on all fronts. She set many conditions for the Government formation.
At the adjoining Kulgam district, once part of Anantnag district, the BJP also held a meeting. The meeting was addressed by State BJP general secretary (organization) Ashok Koul. Addressing the party workers, he said that the BJP will contest the forthcoming panchayat and municipal elections on its own. The BJP will not enter into pre-poll alliance with any political party, he said.
"Our previous Government and now the Governor's dispensation want local bodies and panchayat elections to be held. We have told our workers to be ready for the polls so that BJP makes a political entry in Kashmir…We will fight the coming elections on our own," he said on the sidelines of a party workers' meeting.
The BJP has been claiming since months that it has enrolled over 3.3 lakh members in the Kashmir Valley. In the last Assembly elections, the BJP had suffered humiliating defeats in all the 34 constituencies where it tested political waters, despite intense campaigning and pumping in hundreds of crorers of rupees. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also addressed an election rally in Srinagar, but with no result. All of its candidates, barring one, had forfeited their security deposits. The party could get only a little over 50,000 votes.
The statement of Koul was significant in the sense that the BJP had hinted that it will contest the local bodies' elections and panchayat polls in alliance with the PDP. That the BJP has declared that it will go to the electorate alone only suggests that the possibility of the PDP re-joining hands with the BJP is quite remote.
However, it was former Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh, who took a completely different line while addressing media persons at Amritsar. He claimed that things were moving in the right direction and also claimed that the PDP-BJP Government would be in place with Mehbooba Mufti in the driving seat. "Most probably Mehbooba Mufti would assume the office of the Chief Minister," he said.
Nirmal Singh rubbished the Congress' oft-repeated allegations that the "PDP was close to anti-national forces active in the Kashmir valley" and accused the Congress of leveling false allegations against the PDP to divert the people's attention from its own misdeeds.
"The allegations were a deliberate attempt of the Congress to deviate the attention of the countrymen from the raging controversy over anti-national slogans raised at JNU," he said, and added that both the PDP and the BJP will surely form Government in the State. "It may take time, but both parties will surely form the Government," he said, adding that "the alliance between the BJP and the PDP would be formed on the basis of governance and not on ideology".
In other words, Nirmal Singh took a line completely different from the one taken by PDP president Mehbooba Mufti at Srinagar the same day. Mehbooba Mufti had told her party workers that she will not dilute her party's ideology and her father's vision just for the sake of power.
All this suggests that while Mehbooba Mufti is as clear as crystal as far as the issue of Government formation is concerned, the local BJP leadership is almost clueless. It doesn't know that it is dealing with uncompromising and unrelenting Mehbooba Mufti. That's the reason the BJP has been at the receiving end in Jammu as well as the rest of the country. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
STOCK UPDATE |
|
|
 |
| BSE
Sensex |
 |
| NSE
Nifty |
|
|
| |
CRICKET UPDATE |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
