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| Mufti-Farooq Abdullah rift widens | | Sonia wants Azad to stay put in J&K | | POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI, July 5: With the unpublished decision of the Congress high command--Sonia Gandhi, to be precise--not to allow any change of guard in Jammu and Kashmir in the given situation, chances of foisting a new person on the State in place of the present Chief Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, have considerably receded.
By the time Ghulam Nabi Azad arrived in Delhi on Monday (July 3) on an official visit, it was rumoured not only in the capital cities of Jammu and Srinagar but also in the Union capital that the present Chief Minister was "anxious" for his return journey from Srinagar to Delhi.
This kind of rumour refused to die down, particularly after Prof. Saifuddin Soz, curently Union Minister for Water Resources, flew out to Srinagar on Tuesday (July 4) afternoon on a brief visit to Kashmir. Interestingly, some mediapersons in Srinagar and Jammu were found making telephone calls to their 'sources' in New Delhi on yet another rumour about the likely transfer of Prof. Soz to Srinagar as Ghulam Nabi Azad's successor.
The rumour failed to cause ripples in the Congress party's none-too-placid waters, primarily because of three factors. First, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, esprit de corps of the People's Democratic Party (PDP), and Farooq Abdullah, patron of the National Conference (NC), are pitted against each other.
This phenomenon will not help the Mufti achieve his objective of seeing Ghulam Nabi Azad out and Prof. Saifuddin Soz in as the new Congress Chief Minister for J&K. Farooq Abdullah, who is anti-Soz, will not allow him (Soz) to capture the hot seat.
Second, the 'working relationship' between the Azad camp and the National Conference leadership will not be smooth in the event of any change that will see Farooq Abdullah's 'enemy' (Prof. Soz) at the helm of affairs in Jammu and Kashmir.
Third, even as Prof. Saifuddin Soz is a well-known Kashmiri political figure, he does not have a wider support base among the J&K Congress cadres. As the relations between the J&K Congress and Mufti Sayeed's PDP have soured in recent times, Prof. Soz, who, to many, is a "Gentleman politician", is bound to become controversial in the event of his agreeing to flirt with the Mufti and his men.
The PDP is an important constituent of the present coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir. However, certain utterances by the Mufti and his daughter, Mehbooba Mufti, who is president of the PDP and siting member of the Lok Sabha, have not been taken well by the Congress high command.
Because of their 'provocative' accent, these utterances, according to informed sources, have displeased the top Congress leadership, even as it is known to senior party leaders that the PDP continues to be keen on making inroads into large areas of Muslim Kashmir Valley. This phenomenon has, at the same time, posed a challenge to the National Conference.
It was not without purpose when the Congress supremo, Sonia Gandhi, made her choice pretty clear: Ghulam Nabi Azad will for the present stay put in Jammu and Kashmir as the States Chief Minister.
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