Nagender Jamwal
Jammu, January 28: The state would soon get the new government as both the leaders of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) on Wednesday separately met Governor N N Vohra at Raj Bhawan here over the formation of new government, sources said and added that the government formation indications came as both parties’ leaders met the Governor separately at Raj Bhawan here.
The BJP’s national general secretary (organization) Ram Madhav along with state BJP President and MP from Jammu-Poonch constituency, Jugal Kishore Sharma and MLA (Billawar), Dr Nirmal Singh met the Governor N N Vohra. Their meeting stood for about half an hour, sources said.
After this, PDP senior leader and MLA (Rajpora), Dr Haseeb Drabu also met the Governor.
However the leaders of both sides remained tight lipped over the deliberations having taken place between their respective leaders and the Governor, sources said that these were confined to political situation vis-a-vis government formation in the state.
Sources said that the meetings assumed significance as both Madhav and Drabu have been authorized by their respective party high command to hold talks with each other on government formation in the state.
Sources said that both the party leaders explained the Governor that their talks over government formation have reached a formal and final stage and all the issues between them sorted out, sources said and added that during the meeting, Governor told one of the party delegations that he too wanted an early government formation in the state so that it starts working soon.
After the meetings, Raj Bhavan issued a statement which said Drabu apprised the Governor “about the realisations which have emerged from the PDP-BJP parleys on government formation which have been continuing for the past about a
month and the broad contours of the matters being finalised in the coming days.”
In another release, the Raj Bhavan said during the one-hour long meeting Madhav informed the Governor “about the present status of the ongoing BJP-PDP discussions on the formation of an elected Government.”
Even the PDP patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had only last week admitted that track-II talks between PDP and the BJP were in progress. Pointing out that while people gave mandate to PDP in the Valley and BJP in Jammu region, Mufti said that “if my shaking hands with them (BJP) will benefit the state, I will do that.”
Earlier to it, Minister of State (MoS) in the PMO Dr Jitendra Singh had admitted that some authorized leaders from both the BJP and PDP were in touch with each over issue of government formation. He, however, had refused to divulge details saying that it would create problems for “authorised” leaders holding talks on the matter.
In the hung Legislative Assembly, PDP has 28 members, closely followed by BJP (25), NC (15), Congess (12) and others (7). Though Congress and NC had offered support to PDP for government formation, the latter preferred BJP as it would amount to defeating the mandate of the people who had defeated both these parties during the 2014 assembly elections. An indication of their having reached a broad understanding over government formation became evident recently when both the PDP and BJP decided to contest only two Rajya Sabha seats each so as to avoid fielding candidates against each other during elections being held on February 7.