At a time when the Assembly elections are due by the end of this year in Jammu and Kashmir, the coalition partner of governance Congress calling for monitoring of transfer by Election Commission comes as nothing new. The split in the partnership and change in preferences too have come to fore only on the basis of conducting Assembly polls. The State Government had stopped all transfers vide a directive issued on 15th September after the floods. But with the normalisation of the situation, the order was revoked on 11th October. The urgency to revoke its own order is something which has become a point of contention with Congress calling poll body to monitor the transfer business so that irregularities can be checked at an earlier stage itself. The coalition is completing its six year tenure in January next. Transfers have remained always a point of contention especially the timing. The only logic one can see is that the government would like to see its favourites at places of choice before the elections are announced in the State. There have been numerous reports of irregularities in transfers in the State. The Congress-NC Coalition Government had come to power under Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in January 2009. Though the alliance has seen several ups and downs in the past few years, the demand for going alone in the Assembly polls rose after the Lok Sabha elections in which both the parties failed to win even a single seat. Now at its fag end, the alliance looks like a marriage of inconvenience. Both PDP and NC, the two main regional parties being sworn enemies, provided the Congress a catalytic ‘must be’ status in any future political combination in the State. The Congress is relishing the opportunity by having the proverbial cake of power and enjoying it too.
