Mehbooba Mufti keeps BJP hanging on govt formation

Party's assessment is that PDP leader will not take drastic step of severing alliance

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has struggled to find a suitable interlocutor to reach out to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) chief, Mehbooba Mufti, for over a month now.

The alliance-government in Jammu & Kashmir is seemingly on the brink, but the BJP is hopeful that PDP would not walk out.

The BJP leadership, which was to meet on Monday evening here, was willing to be patient but had decided to be unbending on any further demands from the PDP chief.

According to sources, the BJP’s assessment was that Mehbooba would not take the drastic step of severing the alliance. The BJP-PDP “agenda for alliance” was signed for the entire six-year term of the Assembly and shouldn’t be changed with the coalition yet to complete even a year in office, BJP members said.

But the uncertainty in the BJP camp is primarily because neither of the two leaders who had last year led the negotiations between the two parties — PDP’s Hasib Drabu and Ram Madhav of BJP — have found access to Mehbooba after the passing away of her father and the then chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, on January 7.

On Sunday, Governor N N Vohra asked Mehbooba and state BJP chief Satpal Sharma to clarify the stand of their respective parties on government formation. The PDP Legislature Party met in Srinagar on Monday.

In its first meeting after the Mufti’s demise, the legislators authorised Mehbooba to convey the party’s point of view on government formation to the governor. PDP sources didn’t clarify if Mehbooba was elected the leader of the legislature party.

At a party meeting on Sunday, the PDP chief told party leaders she would take a call after “reassessing” whether ally BJP’s government at the Centre would take substantive steps in a “set timeframe” to address the “core” political and economic issues of the state.

National Conference (NC) leader Farooq Abdullah said on Monday if the PDP was not ready to form the government, fresh elections should be held. “We have only 15 MLAs and are in no capacity to form a government,” Abdullah said.

The state BJP chief said in Srinagar it would be premature to speak about fresh polls. He said the party had not received anything in writing from the PDP about the Centre transferring power projects to the state government.