SANT KUMAR SHARMA
Jammu, Jan 17|16: It is time to move on, as far as a government led by Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti is formed at the earliest. It is time that Ms Mufti puts behind the loss of her father, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, chief minister then, as he died suddenly on January 7. It is easier said than done, of course. Mufti Sayeed was the person who had taught the A, B, C of politics, its intricacies to Mehbooba over the years. It is now time to redeem his faith and trust in her capabilities of some day taking over from him. The time for shouldering those responsibilities has arrived and there is no escaping it. Mehbooba may have wanted things to be different but they have happened the way they have. For her to back off from shouldering the burden of chief ministership won’t do. She would perhaps want more time to mourn her father, but she has no time for that. On Monday, January 18, the legislature session was earlier scheduled to start but same stands postponed now. Haseeb Drabu was to unveil some “special ideas’’ as part of the new budget exercise, but he will have to wait for some time. All eyes are presently on Mehbooba as she prepares for becoming the first woman CM of Jammu and Kashmir. In an instant, anything and everything that she does, or does not do, will be hypothetically comapared to Mufti Sayeed. Administering the state of J&K is a difficult task in the best of circumstances, and she knows it too well being in active politics for long. She knows that on every step of the way, there will be challenges, which she will need to meet head-on. As an opposition leader, she made things difficult for Omar Abdullah as CM to govern. She mobilized her legislators, strategized and went against Omar from the word go. She senses now that the National Conference (NC) under Omar will return the favour, with interest, perhaps. These things should
not be knew, in fact they are not, for her as she prepares to be the CM, in place of her father. In her father’s tenure, she often disagreed with him in private. Late Mufti is known to have sometimes gone against her advice. Preferring to do things the way he did, not the way Mehbooba wanted. In the age of Internet, 10 days (since January 7, the day Mufti Sayeed died) look like several years. All this speculation about who will form a government should end now. It is time Mehbooba took over as CM and start governing, giving policy directions wherever needed.
