There are again rumblings within the coalition. And this time a senior Congress leader Mangat Ram Sharma has called for a rotational chief minister, a demand the state Congress has so far shied away from making. He has also proposed the name of the state Congress chief Saif-u-Din Soz as the new chief minister. The party has also sought the inclusion of the 73rd amendment of the Constitution of India in the J&K Panchayat Raj Act, again a demand fraught with political repercussions in state riven with Azadi, autonomy and self rule politics. In fact, Sharma touched upon many sensitive subjects, demanding “one-time settlement” of West Pakistan and Pakistan Administered Kashmir refugees. Though he did not articulate it as aggressively as BJP does, Sharma's speech also implicitly referred to the discrimination with Jammu.  He asked for ''equal right'' for Jammu in power sharing and raised the demand for a CM from Jammu.  On the side of National Conference, it is the senior leader Mustafa Kamal who voices unease of the party with the bindings of a coalitional arrangement. Kamal has time and again criticized Congress for trying to hold the NC led government under leash. He has accused New Delhi (read Congress) of failing to keep its historical pledges and betraying NC. Kamal has also raised the larger troubling questions about the settlement of Kashmir, saying 1975 Accord between Sheikh Abdullah and New Delhi never happened as Congress subsequently withdrew support to Sheikh led government in 1977.  Kamal for a good measure has thus invoked bitter historical rivalry with Congress and tried to portray the unfolding troubles as a repetition of this history. Congress, on the other hand, was uneasy about CM Omar Abdullah's speech in the Assembly in which he asserted that Kashmir had only acceded and not merged with India. And ironically, Omar was not pleased with Congress minister Sham Lal's Azadi advocacy for Kashmir. In moments of intense strain between the two parties, Omar has rushed to shore up his support by the Congress high command. Often, when situation has become tough for him, like in the course of summer unrest this year, it is New Delhi which has played a role in bailing him out.  However, while intervention from the top has silenced the dissent with the Congress ranks in the state, it has often resurfaced as is the case now. And this time the growing bitterness has been voiced by Sharma, a former deputy chief minister. Even though there is nothing seriously unusual about this turn of events and the unease within the Congress leadership will add up to little as long as the high command refuses to play along. Besides, the friction between the coalition partners is not the result alone of the ideological and policy differences between the two, but owes itself in part to the intra-party politics in the Congress also. That is, state Congress remains vertically split between the loyalists of Soz and those of the union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. Often, the two factions have sparred and acted to the detriment of each other. And as it is bound to do, this internal wrangling has reflected upon the health of the coalition government. Even though Soz on his part has been a stabilizing factor, there has been a consistent effort to undermine him. And there seems also little effort by New Delhi to set things right in the state. Centre, on the other hand, has intervened when relationship between the coalition partners has deteriorated, and threatened the survival of the government.  But it is the impact of this growing disaffection on the functioning of the government that New Delhi seems to be least bothered about. Situation has come to a pass where both the coalition partners are increasingly plowing in opposite directions. It is now time to watch how efforts are made not only by New Delhi but also by the NC and Congress at the state level to work to overcome their differences and concentrate on a more effective governance.

Lastupdate on : Wed, 29 Dec 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 29 Dec 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:00:00 IST