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| Azad takes bull by horn by divesting Qazi Afzal of forest deptt | | |
EARLY TIMES
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
JAMMU:
By divesting Qazi Mohammad Afzal, a PDP minister, of forest portfolio, the Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has caught the bull by the horn. In displaying boldness and guts to take action against a minister in his cabinet, who belongs to the ruling alliance partner PDD, the Chief Minister has taken a calculated risk to confront the Mufti led PDP, with the relations between the two major coalition partners far from being smooth. Qazi is supposed to have been removed from the forest department as a result of complaints about his bungling and resorting to doubtful means, leading to the acute scarcity of timber to the people in the valley.
Although allotting a particular portfolio to a cabinet colleague as well as taking back the same is the prerogative of the Chief Minister, but in the coalition politics it hardly works in practice. The PDP patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and the party President Mehbooba Mufti creating a crises for the coalition government in the wake of Ghulam Nabi Azad ignoring their advice to not allot to his then Deputy Chief Minister and PDP nominee in the Azad cabinet, Muzaffar Hussain Baig, the portfolios of Finance, Planning and Law, leading to PDP withdrawing Baig from the cabinet and ultimately forcing the Chief Minister to allot these portfolios to the man Friday of Muftis, Tarraq Hamid Qarra, is yet fresh in the memory of the people here. Since the present step is believed to have been taken by Azad, without taking Muftis into confidence, the latter are likely to not take it friendly, notwithstanding the Chief Minister's prerogative in this behalf.
Shafi Qureshi, the pioneer Congress leader in J&K
By appointing senior Congress leader from J&K, Mohammad Shafi Qureshi as Chairman of the National Minorities Commission, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to be moiré precise, Congress President Sonia Gandhi has killed two birds with one stone. On one hand, a rival to Ghulam Nabi Azad has been removed from the political scene in Jammu and Kashmir and thus giving Azad a free hand in the affairs of Jammu and Kashmir. On the other hand it is a move towards placating the Muslims of Kashmir Mohammad Shafi Qureshi, a former Union Minister and also a former J&K Predesh Congress President, is credited to be the pioneer in extending the activities of the Congress to Jammu and Kashmir. It was sometime in 1963 that a lawyer by profession, who was not active in politics, till then, Mohammad Shafi Qurashi launched an agitation in Srinagar city against the corrupt government of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad. Mobilizing few teen aged boys he would take out processions in the Srinagar streets, raising anti Bakshi and pro Congress slogans, demanding extension of the Congress party to J&K and dismissal of corrupt Bakshi government. Those days the word of the then J&K Prime Minister, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad was the law and no one dared speak against it, particularly in Kashmir valley, where no democracy existed and no free expression of voice was allowed.
Wild speculations about Hari Om's resignation:
In the face of no explanation given by former J&K BJP vice president and spokesperson Prof. Hari Om about his resignation from the party and withdrawing from politics all together and particularly reticence on his part, even after ten days of his submitting the papers, speculations are rife and various guesses are being made in the political and media circles about the circumstance leading Prof. Om taking this extreme step. The reason for the same given by a section of the media that Hari Om has left politics, on the advice of Jammu University Vice Chancellor, who has offered him an important academic assignment, seems least convincing. Prof. Hari Om had been actively involved in politics as the Vice-President and sole spokesperson of J&K BJP, even when he was Head of the History Department in the University. If he could spare enough time for party activities while being head of a department in University, his own explanation of his inability to continue at the party post, on account of being involved in academic assignments at hand too is not convincing. The only explanation is his differences with the present President of the state unit, who had clipped his wings and made him ineffective by appointing two other insignificant party leaders as spokespersons. His suffocation under the circumstances was but natural. Since Hari Om is neither a mass leader nor has any own constituency, to form a group in the party, the only option with him was either to continue in the party pocketing humiliation or to leave it. Leaving scope for his come back, he has not leveled any charges against any party leader, but cited his personal reasons for withdrawing from politics. It is not for the first time that Hari Om has left the BJP, but like his previous exit from the Party, after leveling charges against his rivals, this time he has shown maturity and sagacity by remaining reticent.
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