Dissidence, infighting in Congress to affect coalition govt also

Syed Ali Safvi

SRINAGAR, Apr 5: Dissidence and infighting within the ranks of Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) is not only likely to sabotage the hard-earned goodwill of the party in the state, but it is also likely to make matters worse for the NC-Congress coalition, already caught in the eye of the storm.

JKPCC may be trying its best to brush aside the internal bickering among rival groups in the party, but the animosity brewing in the party ranks has manifested itself in several forms. The internal strife has split the party into two factions and both are at loggerheads.

Pertinently, the JKPCC statements, denying the internal bickering, have been ridiculed by senior Congress leaders.

During a meeting in winter capital yesterday, senior members of the party, including several ministers and legislators, castigated the JKPCC chief for taking "individual decisions".

Now, a group of JKPCC members, considered Ghulam Nabi Azad's loyalists, want Congress high command to intervene into the matter to diffuse the growing animosity on both sides.

"Congress party, throughout the country, has a history of infighting. It has lived with factionalism. There is nothing new in it," says Prof Rekha Choudhary, a political analyst in the Department of Political Sciences at Jammu University (JU). "The infighting will go on only up to a crisis point. Congress is controlled by UPA chairperson, Sonia Gandhi, who is personally concerned about the coalition relations."
She says the two factions in JKPCC have been operating from the day one the coalition was formed. She believes that the infighting would not seriously hamper the relations between NC and Congress.

However, Prof Chowdhary and other experts believe that the internal bickering could perturb the party's anticipation in the upcoming local body election.

"Infighting within Congress is public now and is bound to affect its performance during the local bodies' polls. Nobody would like to repose faith in a political party, which is fragmented and rushing in two different directions," says a senior journalist, Peerzada Ashiq, who writes for Hindustan Times.
According to him, the infighting within JKPCC, particularly between (Abdul Gani) Vakil and Soz had always costed to the party. "Kupwara is an example where many workers switched sides because of squabbling Congress leader," he says.

Union minister for health, Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is on a four-day visit to the state, has preferred to maintain silence on the issue. He refused to talk about the party infighting while talking to media persons on the sidelines of his visit to Government Medical College (GMC) Srinagar today.

Curiously, Azad has also distanced himself from the JKPCC chief, Saif-ud-Din Soz. Both the leaders had come face to face at Royal Spring Golf Course here on Saturday, but they did not even greet each other or exchange a single word.

The months-long bitterness among rival groups in the party had got augmented after Soz decided to welcome elder son of commander of government-backed gunmen and one time legislator, Kuka Parray, into the party fold.

Yesterday's meeting had castigated Soz's "individual decision" and ignoring old loyalists while taking decisions having statewide repercussions.