PDP strikes when poll iron is hot, exits Azad govt over Amarnath

“We have been impelled to take this decision in view of the ever deepening crisis and unabated series of deaths,” PDP president Mehbooba Mufti told a press conference soon after the party decided to pull out of the coalition government. “The situation brooks no delay and it is the government’s responsibility to immediately act to revoke the land diversion order which is at the centre of the current crisis. It is, therefore, our moral responsibility to dissociate from the government without any further delay,” she added.

Saying that her party cannot be “insensitive to the situation” and didn’t want “more killings”, Mehbooba clearly positioned her party and turned the controversial forest land transfer issue into a poll plank. She said Union Home Minister Shivraj Patel and National Security Advisor M K Narayanan had called her to try and find a way out. “I told them that we need to look for a way out because we need to stop the bloodshed. But we (PDP) cannot continue to be in the government,” she said.

The survival of Azad’s government is now hinged primarily on whether the opposition National Conference, which has 24 members in the house, extends its support to the government. Although NC president Omar Abdullah has called a party meeting tomorrow, it is highly unlikely that the party will support the Azad government, especially when the PDP has left on the emotive issue of forest land transfer.

The CPI(M), which is supporting the Azad government from outside, is making the revocation of the land transfer order a pre-condition for its support. The party has two members. “If we support them, they will have to first revoke this order (land transfer),” said CPI (M) general secretary and legislator M Y Tarigami.

The party’s legislator from Tangmarg, Ghulam Hassan Mir, said: “Before I extend my support, they will have to revoke this order”.

The BJP has a...