Hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti met on Monday over the worsening law and order situation in the Valley, senior People’s Democratic Party leader and former deputy CM Muzaffar Hussain Baig said Mehbooba should “go back to the people,” instead of “sticking to the alliance” with BJP.
Mediocre coalition govt makes PDP appear more ‘loserish’
News18 reported, Baig said the PDP has been “the loser in the coalition” as it has “lost more political capital than the BJP”.
“There is disenchantment, inexperience and lack of commitment in the present coalition government. Mehbooba has to take a hard view of it,” said Baig.
“If she doesn’t find the coalition functional, she should not stick to it. She should go back to the people and try earning their trust again.” he added.
Baig said it was wrong to compare today’s BJP with that of the Atal Behari Vajpayee era. Terming Modi “more powerful than anyone before him,” Baig said, the PDP-led state government “has done very little to utilise the funds”.
Tarigami suggests Mehboboba to quit coalitition before its too late
Baig’s statement comes at a time when the PDP-BJP coalition has been blamed for failing to handle the situation in the Valley, which has gone from bad to worse.
On Sunday, Kulgam MLA and CPI (M) leader M Y Tarigami appealed to Mufti to quit the coalition “before it’s too late”. “The PDP used to claim that its Agenda of Alliance with the BJP is a sacred document. Is there anything sacred left in the Agenda of Alliance now? In 2015 we had said it is an opportunistic alliance but now we also say it is an illegitimate alliance,” said Tarigami.
He alleged that the BJP-led government at the Centre has adopted a strategy of “using force to suppress the Kashmiri people to serve their cynical political interests of advancing the Hindutva agenda and making Kashmir an issue for rousing feelings of Hindu nationalism in the rest of the country”.
Farooq abdullah finds the govt a ‘painful joke’
On Friday, National Conference President and Srinagar MP Farooq Abdullah said the alliance was a “painful joke”. Speaking against an alleged statement by Chander Prakash Ganga, a BJP minister in Mufti-led government, justifying the use of violence against Kashmiri protesters, Abdullah said, “This is yet another fixed-match between the PDP and the BJP. Had PDP really been outraged at what the Minister has said, they would have broken their alliance with the BJP as a mark of protest. However, their decision to remain with the BJP irrespective of BJP’s anti-Kashmir politics has exposed the PDP.”
Ram Madhav recognizes scope for improvement in governance
Last week, in an interview with News18, Ram Madhav, national general secretary of BJP had said, “If you are asking me as to whether the BJP-PDP state government has done enough to control the situation, I am ready to admit that we could have done better. We should do better and it is our responsibility. We can’t blame anybody else because we are the ruling party. But if you ask me if it is a liability, I say no. We are together with a purpose, which is to provide good governance to the state”.
