Omar Abdullah tells PDP: Break BJP pact if no govt deal

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and working president of the National Conference (NC) Omar Abdullah on Sunday asked Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti to be bold enough in breaking alliance with the BJP if not ready to form the new government in the state.

“PDP can’t keep the issue open-ended under the garb of confidence-building measures (CBMs), which even the coalition partner BJP doesn’t know, least to speak of the people,” Mr Abdullah told reporters at the sideline of a sports function held in the winter capital Jammu. He said there has to be a time-frame to get the CBMs Ms Mufti has asked for as the people and the state is not going to wait for them forever.

The PDP, he said, should fix a deadline and if no reply is forthcoming, they should tell the BJP straight way that the alliance is over and go to the people. “We are also waiting for that to go to the people. As of now the PDP and BJP continue to be in alliance as none of them has broken it,” he said.

The NC leader asked that when their alliance is intact and both the partners have numbers as well where is the hitch in forming the government and said the Agenda of Alliance, the common minimum programme was worked out by the PDP and the BJP before Mufti Muhammed Sayeed took over as chief minister on March 1, 2015.

Mr Abdullah said he would not like to comment on whether Ms Mufti was scared of continuing alliance or facing the people but said that all that he knows is that if she is a leader, she should lead and not follow.

On other options, the former chief minister declared that NC is not willing either to form government as of now or to have any relation the BJP.

“If she is not ready to lead the state with conviction, she should announce it and not keep the state guessing,” he said and added that she has been talking about CBMs but not spelling out these. He questioned as to why these “so-called” CBMs were not raked up when Mr. Sayeed was alive. “It is a complex situation, she didn’t remember the CBMs then”, he said.

On other options about government formation, the former chief minister declared that NC is not willing either to form government as of now or to have any relation the BJP. “We have time and again made it clear that our doors to BJP are closed. We don’t want even to discuss this. We had closed our doors a year ago and these continue to be closed even today”,” he said.

He added that NC is being told about the alliance with NDA during the times of Atal Behari Vajpayee and asserted there is a huge difference between BJP of then and the BJP of now. “And the arrangement was limited at the Centre then”, he said. Mr. Abdullah said that NC had volunteered unconditional support to Mr. Sayeed last year only because “we believed that presence of the BJP in the government was not in the interest of the state”. He said this has actually happened during the past ten months PDP-BJP rule. To a question about Ms. Mufti’s talking about principles, the NC leader asked where these principles had gone when the PDP formed the government about a year ago. He said Ms. Mufti justified and defended the PDP-BJP alliance at two high profile seminars in New Delhi last year and sought to remind her that even as the alliance tailored by Mr. Sayeed was the same, the people were the same, the state was the same and only if anything had changed was that he (Mr. Sayeed) was not alive and asked “then why she is taking so much of time in forming the government. Mr. Abdullah said that his party was ready to face the electorate afresh from the day the PDP-BJP formed the government “because everybody knew about the fragility of this dispensation from day one”. Meanwhile, Mr. Abdullah discussed the overall political scenario prevailing in Jammu and Kashmir with senior party functionaries at a meeting in Jammu.