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UNFINISHED AGENDA
between the coalition partners while on one hand dismantled the public trust in government on the other hand it made bureaucracy more powerful than the political leadership leading to irrational decisions. It was a worst kind of chaos and disarray which the warring coalition partners put the state into. It is for everyone to heave a sigh of relief after the fall of such an inconvenient arrangement. Art of Survival Congress had more numbers than the PDP but still Mufti regime was more stable than the Azad dispensation. In fact Mufti mastered the art of political survival and Azad lost to his over confidence. Though a deep dent it was to the public exchequer, Mufti made every body, more or less, a Minister whosoever supported the coalition. Besides a 38 member council of Ministers, he had a dozen other legislators adjusted as chairpersons of corporations and boards with the status and protocol of ministers. Therefore, even the Congress legislators were more comfortable with Mufti. However, they had always aspired of getting more under Azad's term. When Azad took over the power, he dropped most of the independents and the Congress legislators who were Ministers in Mufti's government. The strength of Minister was reduced from 38 to 10. Gripe started nourishing right from the day one. The Congress camp was more annoyed with Azad than anyone else. Senior party leaders like Mangat Ram Sharma (Deputy Chief Minister in Mufti Government), Taj Mohiuddin and Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed were humiliated with the
p o r t f o l i o s l i k e Yo u t h A f f a i r s , Information Technology and Animal Husbandry etc. Therefore, he created a powerful enemy camp within his own party. Among his first major policy decisions he brought legislation on downsizing the Ministry to 25 per cent of total strength of legislature. This blocked the prospects of many to become a Minister even as the cabinet was expanded a year later. By yet another legislation in December 2005, Azad made anti-defection law in Jammu
The rag-tag coalition with Congress and PDP as major partners; Panthers Party, CPI(M) and dozen and half other independents as minor partners agreed on a 30-point basic preamble called as the Common Minimum Programme and Kashmir most stringent of the country. He had probably done this to check dissidence in his own party. After fall of his government, Azad admitted that if he had not brought the antidefection law, his government could have sailed through easily in the trust vote “as many in oppositions had their hearts beating with me”. CMP, What? Some three years ahead of 2002 elections an opinion was created by many political parties and some covert agency elements that National Conference was the worst regime Jammu and Kashmir ever had.
Epilogue Ø 16 × August 2008
Therefore the next election was project as a cleansing operation put the state on a path of peace and progress. At the time of formation of coalition government in 2002, the hopes were raised to a level as if not the leaders but Prophets were going to govern. The ragtag coalition with Congress and PDP as major partners; Panthers Party, CPI(M) and dozen and half other independents as minor partners agreed on a 30-point basic preamble called as the Common Minimum Programme. The CMP drafted under the chairpersonship of Dr Manmohan Singh (now Prime Minister) had points from the election manifesto of all coalition partners. An 11-member Coalition Coordination Committee (CCC) was constituted with Ghulam Nabi Azad as its chairman. Mehbooba Mufti, Saif-ud-Din Soz and Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami were prominent among the members of the CCC. The CCC had only two meetings –first in December 2002 and next in January 2003 –before it was unceremoniously buried forever. Therefore, there was never a coordination between the coalition partners no periodic review of the C o m m o n M i n i m u m Pr o g r a m m e . Ironically, the CMP was never talked about in next five years and, obviously, the progress on the pledges made therein was never reviewed. Now since the coalition has collapsed, its leaders have not been telling people that what they did with those pledges. In the following pages EPILOGUE has made an attempt to discuss each and every point of the CMP and analyse the work done on the pledges. Points have been arranged in a manner to suit the layout. Text in the bold is exactly what was mentioned in the CMP under any particular point and it follows by our analysis of the sector.