He said that former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and state Congress chief Saifuddin Soz were delayed because of the fog. “By the time I arrived here (New Delhi), I had several messages from Mrs Gandhi’s office. We were supposed to meet this evening and now we will meet tomorrow,” he said.

Regarding the possibility of a NC-Congress coalition, a source close to the Abdullah family said that “we are 99.99 per cent sure about it”. But the party still has one hitch. With 21 seats, the PDP has not given up hope yet. And former Chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti — the father-daughter duo of the PDP — enjoy a cordial relationship with 10 Janpath as well as with Soz. Azad, however, favours an alliance with the NC.

Farooq and Omar flew to New Delhi to hold meetings with the Congress high command soon after the feud over the candidature of NC’s chief ministership was amicably resolved after a long and tense night of discussions within the Abdullah family. The confusion surfaced after Farooq Abdullah made contradictory statements — first saying Omar would be the party’s candidate for CM and he would prefer to be in Parliament only to later call himself as the NC’s chief ministerial candidate.

Omar, trying to keep this controversy out of public glare, lost the script once when he told his father on a TV channel that he (the father) would need to be lot more serious and deliver if the party had to avoid PDP’s inroads into its political turf.

... contd.