The BJP has said it is now waiting for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to initiate the Constitutional process of forming a government in Jammu and Kashmir after the party, in a meeting on Sunday, authorised its chief Mehbooba Mufti to take a decision in this regard.
Referring to the praise heaped on Prime Minister Narendra Modi by the PDP leadership in that meeting, BJP general secretary in-charge of J&K, Ram Madhav, said, “It is good that the PDP wants a continuation of the BJP-PDP arrangement as established by Muftiji. It is up to the PDP to initiate the constitutional process of forming a government in the State.”
The party, sources say, is reasonably confident that Ms. Mufti will come around to forming the government more or less around the old arrangements, once she has “strengthened her own hold on things.”
Senior party men from the State acknowledged that Ms. Mufti and her party may be paying a political price for having allied with the BJP but that, “the mandate was such that there is no other way.”
They also said Ms. Mufti was likely firming up her hold over the party structure in the face of those who were loyal to her father, late chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, and form the old guard.
“We are therefore waiting for her to reconcile these issues and come around to forming the government. Some minor tweaking of portfolios is likely, but we do not anticipate that anyone would like to call snap polls when five full years of a tenure are left,” said a source.
The party is hopeful that there would be any number of legislators and others in the PDP who would be able to bring this point across.
