SRINAGAR, 21 October — A last ditch effort yesterday to forge an alliance between the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the Congress party in Jammu and Kashmir appears to have failed, sources in the two parties said.
Senior Congress leader Manmohan Singh and PDP chief Mufti Muhammad Sayeed failed to resolve the deadlock over the choice of the chief ministerial candidate in spite of hour-long deliberations, the sources said.
Singh, who had been asked by Congress President Sonia Gandhi to resolve the impasse, arrived here yesterday and drove straight to the heavily guarded Broadway Hotel for discussions with Congress leaders of the state and the newly elected party legislators. He met Sayeed thereafter but the two leaders could not break the deadlock, the sources said. Singh will meet the PDP chief today before returning to Delhi.
"We will be meeting again tomorrow," Singh told reporters at Sayeed’s residence. However, the PDP chief declined to speak to reporters. PDP sources said Sayeed would meet his own party leaders today before the second round of talks with Singh. Sources said Sayeed had made it clear to Singh that a PDP nominee should head the government in the state.
But Congress leader Peerzada Muhammad Sayed insisted that "there will no comprise over the choice of the chief minister. "The government in the state will be headed by a Congress chief minister and we have made this clear (to the party’s national executive)," Sayed said. He claimed that with help from independent legislators, the Congress would get the necessary numbers to stake its claim to form a new government.
"We will soon get the required numbers to form the government. We hope the PDP will support us in forming a government in the state." On Saturday Governor G.C. Saxena had said "there is no deadline for political parties to stake their claim to form the government."
Meanwhile, two security personnel were killed and three wounded yesterday when suspected rebels attacked security patrols in Kashmir’s main city, police said.
A police spokesman told Reuters militants had fired at patrols in two districts in the heart of Srinagar. "Two security force personnel were killed and three others were injured," he said. No militant group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Elsewhere in the troubled region, police said, five militants and two civilians had been killed in separate gun battles since Saturday evening.
They said a member of the Hizbul Mujahedeen group, holed up in a mosque on the outskirts of Srinagar, had surrendered to security forces yesterday.
The armies of the nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, deployed on the military control line which divides Kashmir between the two, have exchanged heavy fire this week.
An Indian trooper was wounded and military facilities were damaged when Pakistani border guards fired mortars across the Line of Control yesterday, officials said.
