National Conference (NC) patriarch Farooq Abdullah’s dreams of becoming a Union Cabinet minister are likely to get a cool response from the Congress leadership, which has decided to treat its ally from Jammu and Kashmir on a par with the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
The Congress has an alliance with NC in Jammu and Kashmir. Party sources said it was enough that “we’ve given them the chief ministership of a state for six years”.
The Congress, the sources said, was also angry with the NC for playing the communal card in the sensitive Leh Lok Sabha constituency, which led to the defeat of Congress nominee P Namgyal.
The NC had openly backed Ghulam Hassan Khan, its provincial president who had contested from Leh as an independent candidate after the seat was bagged by the Congress in a pre-poll arrangement. Khan has won the seat but so far the NC has neither taken action against him nor asked him to resign from the party.
Khan’s presence in the fray had led to communal polarisation between Buddhists and Muslims.
Highly placed party sources said that Sonia Gandhi was more upset with “NC playing divisive politics in a border region, where peace between the two communities had been restored after years of social boycott”.