Congress drops guard, warms to power-sharing

Srinagar, Nov 20: After announcing that the Congress won’t become a part of the Omar Abdullah led government in J&K till statehood is restored, the ‘grand old party’ seems to have changed its mind.

All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary G A Mir recently stated that although Congress does not have any representative in the government yet the fact is that the dispensation led by Omar Abdullah is a coalition government. “We fought elections jointly. Numbers do not matter. All stakeholders are equally important in the government,” he said.

Mir, who represents Dooru constituency in J&K legislative assembly, maintained that it was the prerogative of the Chief Minister to include any Congress leader into his cabinet.

The AICC general secretary refrained from reiterating his party’s stand that it would not join the government till J&K’s statehood is restored.

After being sworn in as the first Chief Minister of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah picked up five MLAs as his cabinet ministers. Surinder Kumar Choudhary was appointed as deputy chief minister, while four others i.e. Sakina Itoo. Javed Ahmed Dar, Satish Sharma and Javed Ahmed Rana were assigned to different ministries.

Among the cabinet ministers is a Congress rebel, Satish Sharma, who defeated the BJP's Rajeev Sharma by nearly 7,000 votes and relegated his former party's heavyweight Tara Chand to the third position in the Chhamb seat.

A senior NC leader said, “I don’t think at present Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is thinking of inducting more ministers into his cabinet. He is trying to persuade New Delhi to restore J&K’s statehood.”

“If the Congress wants a ministerial berth it will be discussed at the highest level as in the present Union Territory set up the Chief Minister has to restrict the number of ministers to nine plus one only,” he added.

The leader maintained that as of now there is no plan to expand the cabinet and whenever any such proposal is moved the Congress will be taken on board.