SRINAGAR, 24 October — With its chief accepting an invitation to reopen talks with the Congress party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is hopeful the last hurdles to sharing power in Jammu and Kashmir will be removed by the weekend.
"The talks are back on the rails and the deadlock is likely to break within two days," a party source close to PDP chief Mufti Muhammad Sayeed said here yesterday.
The negotiations almost collapsed Tuesday because neither party was willing to concede the chief minister’s post. The Congress, which has 20 legislators in the 87-member assembly, had then hinted it would bid for power with the help of independent legislators and small parties.
The PDP source said the tussle for the chief minister’s chair was not new in Kashmir. "There was tussle for the top slot between the late Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah and Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad," the PDP leader said.
"Then in the Congress camp itself there was tussle for the chief minister’s post between Ghulam Muhammad Sadiq and Syed Mir Qasim. In fact, the entire political history of the state is a commentary on the tussle for the chief minister’s post."
The source said the fact that negotiations were being reopened proved that the Congress and the PDP realized they risked squandering the mandate the voters of the state had given them after casting their ballots in defiance of secessionist threats.
"Mufti Sayeed is going to New Delhi on Friday and that visit is taking place as part of renewed parleys between the Congress and PDP. This is a clear indication that the two have understood the dangers of dragging their differences beyond a certain point," the PDP source said.
The decision came after a telephone conversation between Congress President Sonia Gandhi and the PDP’s number two, Sayeed’s daughter Mehbooba Mufti.
"She (Mehbooba Mufti) expressed her desire to continue discussion on various proposals that I had made to Mufti," said Congress leader Manmohan Singh.
Incidentally, the renewal of parleys follows a scathing statement from former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, who ridiculed the two parties for fighting a messy battle over the chief ministership.
Farooq, whose National Conference is the single largest party in the assembly with 28 seats even after losing elections, said: "I am watching the tragic mess these two (Congress and PDP) are making. Rest assured, nobody can form a government here without the support of the National Conference."
Meanwhile, a group of eight independent legislators, including Yusuf Tarigami of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) and Ghulam Mohiuddin Sofi, called on Governor G.C. Saxena yesterday.
"We are in contact with both the Congress and PDP," Sofi said. "There is a definite forward movement between the two parties and the deadlock appears to be melting.
"The governor expressed himself clearly to us. He told us that the mandate of the people had been for a political government and not governor’s rule."
Sofi confirmed that his group of five independent legislators and the two CPM members had informed the governor that they would support the Congress-PDP alliance and not any combination supported by the National Conference.
Analysts feel pressures from within the PDP — which has 16 legislators in the new assembly — are mounting on Sayeed, in the light of which he has agreed to give a second chance to an alliance with the Congress.
His change of heart comes after a veiled warning of a split from party colleague Muzaffar Hussain Baig.
"Mufti Sayeed has enough political wisdom and experience and I am sure he would not bring about a situation wherein some of his party colleagues would be forced to part ways," Baig had said.
Meanwhile, 10 people were killed, including an activist of a pro-India political party, in Kashmir overnight and yesterday, a police spokesman said.
