AICC, JKPCC leave Omar Govt in lurch

Governor sends report on ‘political corruption’; CM summoned to Delhi

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Oct 6: Notwithstanding the Irrigation & PHE Minister Taj Mohiuddin’s moral support, principal coalition partner Congress has left Omar Abdullah’s 33-month-long government to fend for itself in the wake of a fast growing onslaught from different opposition parties. While as the minor coalition partners and supporters---Ghulam Hassan Mir, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, Hakeem Mohammad Yasin, Engineer Rashid---have either maintained a studied silence or demanded an inquiry into the Syed Yousuf episode, opposition parties---PDP, BJP, National Panthers Party, JSM---have been strongly calling for CBI investigation.

Political analysts have noticed that Sonia Gandhi-led All India Congress Committee as well as Prof Saifuddin Soz-led Jammu & Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee have opted a discreet silence with regard to hot political developments in the state. Apart from insipid lip services of men like Ghulam Nabi Azad and Munish Tiwari, everybody in AICC and JKPCC has remained mute spectator to the political whirlpool threatening stability of the coalition government. Even in Omar’s own National Conference, only a few like the uncle Sheikh Mustafa Kamal and Ali Mohammad Sagar have issued one-odd statement or defended the ruling family in a newspaper comment or television programme.

Even the Government’s and the ruling party’s propaganda machinery and public relations coterie seems to be completely immobilized. Government’s head of information and public relations as well as so-called media consult have been watching the developments in a way as if trouble has afflicted a distant neighbour. With the NC’s President, Farooq Abdullah, being in the eye of a storm and General Secretary Sheikh Nazir being bed-ridden for over three years now, Dr Kamal was today appointed as an assistant to General Secretary. Sources said that he would also function as the NC’s spokesman.

Apparently to raise his cadres’ morale, Dr Abdullah today arrived in the Ground Zero of Syed Yousuf catastrophe and held a meeting with his party leaders at Nawai-e-Subah. Thereafter, he spoke to the waiting mediapersons, while putting up a brave face but failing to hide his nervousness. He emphatically asserted that all the allegation of Yousuf’s death due to physical torture at CM’s residential office and extortion of graft from aspirants of party tickets and Ministerial berths were “completely baseless and motivated”. He claimed that NC leadership had neither collected nor would in future any monetary contributions from such aspirants. He asserted that Omar would not step down in advance of the findings of a judicial commission he had ordered.

While Dr Abdullah was interaction with media, informed sources revealed to Early Times that Governor NN Vohra sent a detailed report to the Centre on the controversy building up over the controversial death of the NC activist Syed Yousuf. As exclusively reported in today’s issue of this newspaper, Government of India had asked for a detailed report on the sequences from Raj Bhawan. Governor’s Principal Secretary got a communication from Principal Secretary Home, BR Sharma. Later, according to sources, an independent report was compiled and furnished to the Centre.

Sources said that Government of India, as well as AICC, summoned Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to New Delhi for a detailed discussion with him over the turbulent episode and the strategy to be adopted to douse the flames. Centre is expected to make an urgent intervention and clear the decks for appointment of a sitting judge of J&K High Court for holding a judicial inquiry. Sources said that Chief Justice FM Kalifullah, who would be returning from his son’s wedding in Chennai on Friday, was also expected to join the deliberations in the offices of Chief Justice of India and union Ministry of Justice so that decks could be cleared for an early initiation of the inquiry.

Sources in the union capital maintained that Dr Abdullah would be called back to New Delhi tomorrow. He is “very likely” to be asked to resign “voluntarily” as a union Minister in the union cabinet and stay away till he comes clean of the charges of political corruption now being played up on all major television channels and newspapers in the country. However, this would be done only after an understanding between the UPA, AICC and the NC leadership that could crystallize in the next two days.

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