SRINAGAR, 18 January 2005 — Forming a coalition government is an art, but running it successfully is a craft. Pressure on Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed from his political allies in the Congress party appears to be proving this.
Mufti has successfully run a multiparty coalition for more than two years now, but cracks at the seams have started showing up in this otherwise artful coalition.
The epicenter of the political tremor this time are the civic elections that are being held here after 27 long years. Ironically, the voting rights of the minority Kashmiri Pundit community are being used as the handle by Congress leaders to subdue Mufti’s political future and continuity in office.
Deputy Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Mangat Ram Sharma is in the forefront of a campaign launched ostensibly to “protect the right of the migrant Kashmiri Pundits to vote for civic elections in the Valley.”
As per the decisions of the state Cabinet, the migrant Pundits would be casting their votes at their present places of residence in the Jammu city. This also gives the migrant Pundits the right to stand for civic elections in the municipal corporation wards of the Jammu city.
“This nullifies the basic government policy to facilitate the return of the Pundits to the Valley,” Sharma maintains. He said a delegation of the Congress party headed by Raman Mattoo, a junior minister and himself a member of the minority Pundit community, had met the Congress high command in New Delhi to protest the state government’s decision.
Mufti’s PDP believes Sharma is simply trying to ensure that the political chemistry of his stronghold in Jammu East is not changed by Pundits voting and contesting in the Jammu corporation elections.
“The Municipal Corporation Act envisages that a state subject living in any particular part of the state for more than three years assumes the right to vote for local bodies in that area,” said Ghulam Hassan Mir, senior PDP leader and state urban development minister.
As per the terms of the alliance between the PDP and Congress, Mufti has to bow down in favor of the Congress candidate for the chief minister’s post by the end of the year.
Senior Congress leaders have been making statements during the last fortnight here maintaining that the change of guard was a foregone conclusion and Congress’ right to have its chief minister for the next three years was non-negotiable.”
“Congress is slowly, but steadily building up the pressure so that the PDP has no option but to respect the terms of the agreement between the two allies. But in the process, they are making things extremely difficult for the chief minister,” said a senior PDP leader.
He also said that if the state Congress leaders started playing the spoilsport like they have in connection with the civic elections, curtains on the tricky multiparty coalition in the state might come down before its scheduled six-year term in office.
