Headlines
In just 100 days, chinks appear in PDP-BJP rule
By
By Sheikh QayoomJammu, June 9
As the PDP-BJP alliance
completes 100 days in office in Jammu and Kashmir this month, it is
becoming more and more apparent that the two parties are pulling in
different directions.
Many had feared this because the
Jammu-centric Bharatiya Janata Party and the Kashmir Valley-based
Peoples Democratic Party have two politically divergent constituencies
to address.
Sample this...
Deputy Chief Minister and BJP
leader Nirmal Singh declared on Monday that an announcement was on the
cards from the central government allotting an AIIMS like institution to
the Jammu region.
He added that the artificial lake project in Jammu city would be completed by March 2016.
This
contradicted Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed's claim last month
that the lake project was not technically feasible and had been shelved.
The
central government had allotted an IIT to the Jammu region and an AIIMS
to the Valley. While land for the IIT has been identified in Samba
district, that for the AIIMS in the valley is yet to be identified.
The
Jammu Bar Association, traders, transporters and politicians have been
up in arms for some two months demanding that an AIIMS be established in
Jammu region as well. The BJP can't afford to ignore this.
In
matters of postings and transfers of government officials too, the wedge
between the BJP and the PDP has started embarrassing the coalition
government -- the first involving the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir.
Nirmal
Singh recently said that a junior officer of the Jammu Development
Authority who had been transferred should not be relieved because he
(Nirmal Singh) had not been consulted.
The state government (read
PDP) holds that the Kashmir Valley suffered colossal losses during the
September 2014 floods and stands by the Rs.44,000 crore memo submitted
to the central government for relief and rehabilitation.
Nirmal
Singh stunned the PDP allies on Monday when he said that Rs.3,600 crore
should be more than enough for relief and rehabilitation of flood
victims.
Law Minister and PDP leader Syed Basharat Bukhari
expressed shock over Nirmal Singh's remarks but later said he had been
quoted out of context by the media.
The BJP has 25 seats in the 87-member assembly, 24 from the Jammu region and one from Ladakh.
The
PDP has 28 seats, out of which 25 are from the Kashmir Valley. Three
legislators were elected from the Muslim-dominated Rajouri and Poonch
districts of Jammu region.
The BJP couldn't win a single seat from the valley.
Mufti
Sayeed said before embarking on the present coalition that with the
type of fractured mandate, the only way to rule Jammu and Kashmir was to
keep it in one piece was through an alliance between the ideologically
divergent PDP and the BJP.
As they seemingly pull in opposite
directions, Sayeed's ministers, none of whom has any ministerial
experience, are also causing worry to the 79-year-old politician in the
sunset of his political career.