The People’s Democratic Party created ripples in the Valley and across the country when it alleged on the floor of the J&K Assembly that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah figured in the list of suspects in the 2006 Srinagar sex scam, forcing him to announce his resignation. The party also hogged headlines for its president Mehbooba Mufti’s assault on the Speaker on the first day of the ongoing Assembly session.

Now the party has threatened to stall the House if the issues of its concern are not allowed to be raised. The developments have put the state on edge, but the overarching question is: Why is the PDP so desperate for attention when there are five-and-a-half years until the next Assembly elections?

Mehbooba says her party’s agenda is not “election-centric”. “Our role is larger. So is the role of our legislature, which the NC is belittling by confining the debate in the Assembly to water and power issues. We want to discuss larger political issues too,” she says. “Besides, we are fighting New Delhi’s mindset towards Kashmir, whereby things here have to be controlled and guided in the name of stability and in fear of separatists”.

However, NC stalwart and Rural Development Minister Ali Muhammad Sagar begs to differ. He says that the PDP has turned politics into a “market economy”. “The PDP is trying to respond to the public mood in a scientific manner. They gauge the public mood and then try to respond to it with a tailor-made slogan. But in politics if slogans are necessary, so is the need for the party raising them to really mean them,” says Sagar.

... contd.