Ram Madhav rushes to Valley to resolve seat-sharing impasse

Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 25

As serious differences cropped up between the PDP and the BJP over seat-sharing arrangement for the forthcoming Legislative Council elections, BJP general secretary Ram Madhav today air-dashed to Srinagar on an unscheduled visit to hold discussions with Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti.

Highly placed sources said Madhav, who is the architect of the alliance with the PDP, reached Srinagar in a chartered plane on Saturday evening to sort out the issue as the state BJP leadership had failed to reach a seat-sharing agreement with the PDP.

This came as the top leadership of the J&K BJP is busy in Delhi to finalise the names of candidates for the Legislative Council elections.

The sources said recently BJP leaders had met Mehbooba over the seat-sharing agreement. “Mehbooba Mufti has taken a tough stand that the PDP will not spare the Poonch seat for the BJP at any cost,” the sources said, adding, “Instead of taking a stand on the issue, the BJP leaders, who were present in the meeting, rather offered to surrender even the Jammu seat despite the fact that the party has base only in Jammu.”

According to the schedule announced by the Election Commission, the polling will be separately held for filling the two seats from Jammu province, one seat from Poonch and three seats from Kashmir province. The PDP leadership is ready to give one seat from Kashmir province to the BJP but it has taken a tough stand on the Poonch seat.

The sources said the state BJP leadership had failed to effectively project party’s interests so Ram Madhav himself took up the initiative to sort out the issue with the CM. The BJP high command has realised that surrendering the Jammu seat would prove to be disastrous for the party.