Hardly bothered by the plight of their party in the Punjab elections, the leaders of the state Congress here are busy fighting one another. This time it is the lone Congress minister in Farooq Abdullahs cabinet Molvi Ifftekhar Hussain Ansari, who seems to have stirred the hornets nest.
Ansari has demanded an immediate reorganisation of the Pradesh Congress Committee, blaming G R Kar, the state president, for what he calls having made the Congress in J&K a one man show. He even accused Kar, Mufti Mohammad Syed and Mangat Ram Sharma, for having sold the party mandates during last elections to undeserving candidates and thereby bringing a rout to the party.
Ansari, known for his proximity and personal friendship with Ansari, has also accused the trio of Kar, Mufti and Mangat Ram for inducting criminals and militants into the party and making them frontline Congress leaders, overnight with disastrous results. Ansari has taken serious exception to the elections of Mehbooba Mufti, Syeds daughter, as the leader of Congress legislature party in the state.
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He disclosed that Abdullah had offered a sizeable number of seats to the Congress before the elections, but the state leadership of the party desired not to share power with the National Conference. Today, according to Ansari, the party in the state has embarked on an erroneous path of opposition for the sake of opposition against the National Conference government.
thereby ignoring the greater national cause of helping normalcy in the troubled state.
Taking a personal dig against Kar, Ansari accused him of having sold the partys property in Sopore town as if it was Kars personal property.
Ansari is also bitter about Rajesh Pilot, whom he accuses of trying to build castles in the air as far as Kashmir is concerned. Incidentally, Ansaris induction into the cabinet had the blessings of Sitaram Kesari, who attended the swearing-in ceremony when the elected government took office in the State.
Referring to the Congress partys strong exception to Abdullahs comments that Pakistan could keep the PoK and forget Kashmir, Ansari recalled that the very comments once by the countrys foreign minister Sardar Swaran Singh had been welcomed by those very persons who today are making an issue of Abdullahs utterances.
The lashout from Ansari has evoked a strong reaction from the Kar camp, which suggest that a disciplinary action is in the offing against him. If an extreme step like expulsion from the party is taken against Ansari under the states anti-defection law, he could lose his seat in the legislature. Sucha turn of events would lead to Ansaris open confrontation with the central leadership of the party, an eventuality Farooq Abdullah would like to avoid at all costs.