Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) today said here that it has conveyed its “displeasure” to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership over “misunderstanding” on the seat sharing for the Legislative Council polls, a day after both the parties fielded six candidates each for the 11 seats.
According to PDP, both the parties had decided to contest the upcoming biennial elections for 11 vacant seats jointly. While BJP had agreed to field five candidates, the PDP had agreed to fight for six seats.
But to the surprise of PDP, BJP filed nomination papers for six candidates yesterday.
“We (PDP and BJP) had a seat sharing agreement in which PDP was supposed to field six candidates and BJP was to field only five.
“But as they have fielded six candidates we have conveyed our displeasure to the party and we feel there might be some misunderstanding behind this that needs to be sorted out,” PDP chief spokesman Naeem Akhtar told PTI.
He also said that dialogue between PDP and BJP over formation of government in the state has “progressed a lot.”
“The dialogue has progressed a lot, but unless it’s not done it’s not done,” Akhtar said, adding that “time will tell the outcome.”
Asked about RSS’s “displeasure” over BJP joining hands with PDP for formation of government, Akhtar said, “I cannot comment on this, this is something between RSS and BJP, our party has nothing to do with this.”
The two parties had contested Rajya Sabha polls on the seat sharing basis in which PDP won two seats while BJP could win only one seat as Congress candidate Ghulam Nabi Azad who was the joint candidate of Congress and National Conference got reelected to the Upper House.
Amid reports of RSS expressing displeasure over BJP offering concession to the PDP on the ideological issues of Article 370 and revocation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), PDP president Mehbooba Mufti yesterday met Union Minister Arun Jaitley as the two parties try to narrow differences over a Common Minimum Programme (CMP) for formation of a government.
On February 17, MoS in the PMO Jitendra Singh had held an hour-long meeting with Governor NN Vohra, which he said was to discuss administrative related issues.
On a question regarding the delay in the government formation in Jammu and Kashmir, Singh had said, “There are certain authorised leaders within the party who are holding deliberations and discussions on the issue and only they can comment on that.”
When asked to comment on the reported displeasure shown by RSS on BJP offering concessions to PDP on the core ideology of the party he said, “I cannot speak on the issue as I am not authorised to speak.”
The state saw a fractured mandate in the Assembly polls result declared on December 23. PDP emerged as single largest party with 28 MLAs, 16 short of magic number of 44 in the 87-member Assembly. BJP bagged 25 seats followed by National Conference with 15 and Congress 12.
