BJP President Amit Shah gave his assessment on the status of government formation in the state even as PDP's chief spokesman Naeem Akhtar said back channel contacts and consultations were going on but the stage for formal talks had not been reached yet.
The comments by Shah and Akhtar came a day after BJP sought more time from Governor N N Vohra in view of the ongoing dialogue with parties on government formation.
"We want to form government in Jammu & Kashmir," Shah, who was in Mumbai to review BJP's membership drive in Maharashtra, said.
Governor Vohra has set January 19 deadline for formation of the government in the state where Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) has emerged as the largest party with 28 seats in the 87-member Assembly but way short of a majority.
Also Read
BJP is the second largest party with 25 MLAs. National Conference(NC) bagged 15 seats while Congress got 12. Smaller parties and independents accounted for seven seats.
PDP leadership held several rounds of intra-party discussions over the past week and has been undecided on any future alliance in view of stiff opposition to a partnership with BJP by a section of newly-elected MLAs.
BJP on the other hand has been aggressively pursuing the possibility of allying with any regional outfit so that it comes to power in the state for the first time.
With National Conference working President Omar Abdullah, who is in England to visit his parents after their organ transplant surgeries, not expected to be back before January 6, not much headway is expected to be made in government formation.
Madhav flew to Srinagar the same day and met several leaders of valley-based political parties including PDP's Muzaffar Hussain Baigh.