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| Omar ministry lacks cohesion, direction | | |
Early Times Special
Jammu, July 25: It was a fortnight ago that the Chief Minister, Mr Omar Abdullah, managed to expand his ministry on July 11. Over a dozen new ministers later took charge of their respective ministries but any positive impact of the ministry expansion is yet to become visible on the ground.
On January 5, Omar had become the youngest chief minister of the State of Jammu & Kashmir. After taking charge, along with nine cabinet ministers drawn from both the National Conference and the Congress that day, things were left on auto pilot and nothing seemed to move.
It was expected that once the ministry was expanded, the legislators will get down to the serious business of governance. Unfortunately, this has not happened so far as the NC and the Congress ministers are too busy attending felicitation functions, in their respective constituencies.
True to their party tradition, all new Congress ministers made a beeline for Delhi to pay respects to the party chief, Mrs Sonia Gandhi. Mr G M Saroori, Mr R S Chib, Mr Raman Bhalla and other Congress legislators-turned-ministers went to Delhi for the mandatory bow before the lady from whom flows all power in the party.
These ministers also met their respective Union ministers and pleaded the cause of their ministries. Duly assured of support by the Central Ministers, they all returned home thereafter.
The new ministers are in the grip of the euphoria of having finally got control of the levers of power. They are still in thanksgiving mode and have not devoted any time in trying to understand the functioning of their ministries.
This means that during the (stormy?) Legislative Assembly session about to begin in a few days, the ministers will be ill-equipped to handle the brickbats that are sure to come their way.
Baying for their blood will be the strong contingents of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators. The Opposition seems to be one of the strongest any State Government has faced in a long time.
It will be interesting to watch wily Mufi Mohammed Sayeed as a legislator leading his pack. In fact, Mufti had gone into a sulk after handing over the chief ministership to Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad in November 2005 and hardly ever attended the proceedings of the legislature.
In the next three years, he probably attended the Assembly proceedings less than a dozen times. Will he remain perpetually absent during the next six years also? Unlikely but Omar and his colleagues should pray for that.
At the time of the ministry expansion, veteran Congress leader Choudhary Mohammed Aslam raised the banner of revolt by boycotting the swearing-in ceremony, once it became clear that he had been left out. The Congress MLAs from Doda and Bhaderwah, Mr Abdul Majid Wani and Mr Sharif Niaz, are also angry, and that is an understatement.
On the other hand, the National Conference MLA from Kishtwar, Mr Sajjad Kichloo, has also conveyed his displeasure at exclusion from ministry but indirectly. Veterans like Choudhary Ramzan, three-time winner Mir Saifullah and others are also waiting in the wings to show their true colours.
The CM has done a bit of fire-fighting by appointing Mubarak Gul as his political advisor and conferring on him cabinet status. This may not be a breach of the existing law limiting the number of ministers in letter but in spirit, it is essentially a violation.
The question that needs to be asked now is: How many more legislators will be given cabinet, minister of state and deputy minister status without actually being made ministers?
Given all this, the ministry expansion seems to have turned into a fairly futile exercise which has not helped improve the image of the Omar government.
In fact, the legislators from both the coalition partners, the Congress and the National Conference, are accusing one another of having taken the lion’s share in the ministry, in private conversations.
The Congress leaders have been busy pointing out that the NC leadership has wronged them by appointing separate cabinet ministers for health and medical education. Similarly, they also point to the splitting of agriculture ministry from horticulture and floriculture.
To take their argument further, they say that ministries of Consumer Affairs & Public Distribution (CAPD) and Transport have been given to one NC leader, Qamar Ali Akhoon.
Overall, this has created a situation where the Omar ministry seems singularly amorphous and bereft of any fresh ideas.
That bodes ill for the trouble-torn J&K.
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