Ramesh Pandita
With the oath taking ceremony, the PDP-BJP has finally decided to give one more chance to their strained relationship. What remains to be seen is, how far both the alliance partners this time commit themselves to their wedlock, when the agenda of inconvenient alliance sustains, the reason leading both to their wedlock and the possible divorce. It took Mehbooba Mufti almost three months to take over the reins of the state from her late father Jb Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, the PDP patriarch, who served as the Chief Minister of the State twice. With the demise of Mufti Mohd Sayeed, the State turned headless and the State polity reached to a new low of political opportunism, whereby his own daughter, Mehbooba Mufti distanced herself from the political ideology of her late father by abstaining to tread the path, which her father had chosen for the subjects of the State. Mufti Mohammed Sayeed was committed and comfortable with the Agenda of the Alliance, which he abided by till his last breath, but the same Agenda of Alliance became the reason for pushing the State into political instability and deprived the people of the State of their democratically elected government for almost three months.
From the recent political developments, any layman can make out that Mehbooba Mufti and her party colleagues, though reluctant, but were keen to form the government. To regain the patronage of their vote bank and to play the sentimental card to the public of Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti and her party colleagues chose to distance themselves from the BJP, the party which is being looked at as untouchable by the electorate of the Kashmir Valley. The ruling alliance partners during the first year of their rule saw a growing public outcry over the PDP-BJP pact, which, though should not have been the real concern for the PDP, for the fact that this public outcry was backed by the INC and the NC with their supporters to play the emotional card over of the ongoing secessionist struggle. The agenda of inconvenient alliance was pushed to further inconvenience with the dilly-daily tactics, adopted by the PDP president in the government formation. But this cannot snub the fact that the PDP president was equally busy in convincing some of her senior party colleagues, who had shown reservations when Mufti Sayeed chose to join hands with the BJP. If some public hearsay is to be believed, then some party members in the PDP were also reluctant about passing on of the party legacy to Mehbooba Mufti. To keep the aspiration of her late father and the party patriarch afloat, it took Mehbooba Mufti nearly three months to do maelstrom over different issues and to win over her own party colleagues under the garb of the agenda of inconvenient alliance.
The BJP and the PDP are to two political ideologies which stand poles apart and coming together of these two diverse ideologies to form the government was always seen as the rarest of the rare possibility by the political pundits. Thereon, the unconditional support extended to the PDP by the INC and the NC in the government formation further bleakened their prospects, as the primary aim of these parities was to keep the BJP at bay. But, the PDP patriarch, late Mufti Mohd Sayeed showed no hurry in the government formation and took his own sweet time to decide about the coalition partners. The difficulty with Mufti Mohd Sayeed was that he was to take over the reins of the State, which had an empty chest that too at the time when the State was yet to overcome the havoc played by the floods, thereon joining hands with the INC or the NC at that juncture would have served no real good purpose to the PDP in general and the people of the state in particular. Mufti like any sane person should have listened to his mind and chose to join hands with the BJP as its coalition partner and unlike his daughter kept aside the party ideology and didn’t bother about the public outcry, which was bound to echo from the Kashmir valley, especially from the secessionist stronghold.
By joining hands with the BJP, the PDP patron displeased many of his senior party colleagues. Mufti knew that joining hands with the party, which is ruling at the centre, would bring some good fortune to the people of the State and would also help to regain the health of the flood devastated state, mostly by filling its empty chest. Both the BJP and the PDP pretended to work hard on the agenda of alliance to carve common minimum programme, but factually both the parties like today, even the then were actually buying time to set the mood of the electorate of state for an alliance.
(To be continued)
