While tussle between the ruling Congress-PDP over demilitarisation is yet to be far from over, the two main ruling coalition partners in the Ghulam Nabi Azad led government have been caught in another controversy — this time over the issue of delimitation of Assembly constituencies. Explaining this, sources said that while the Chief Minister is keen on going ahead with the draft bill prepared by the Law Department, PDP is all set to oppose it when it is brought by government before the Legislative Assembly for approval next month. Reason: The draft bill, copies of which were circulated by state government for consideration to all the political parties as part of the delimitation exercise, was not approved by the PDP. Even Law Minister Tariq Hamid Karra, who is the party MLA from Batmaloo and is considered to be a loyalist of former Chief Minister Mufti Mohamamd Sayeed, has not reportedly given his consent to the draft legislation prepared by his own department, sources said. They further said that what appears to have irked the PDP more is that the state government did not even seek the mandatory approval from the Cabinet before circulating the draft bill to the members of the all party committee set up to discuss the issue. According to sources, this whole exercise of preparing the draft bill was done without involving the law minister, who is a PDP member. “It was all done unofficially just to seek consensus of the members,” said one of the coalition members. The need for circulating this draft bill arose following the insistence of some members of the all-party member committee, which was headed by senior Congress minister Pandit Mangat Ram Sharma. PDP’s senior minister Abdul Aziz Zargar, a member of this committee, abstained from all its meetings, clearly indicating that the party was not in favour of any agenda taken up the committee, including citizenship rights of Pakistan refugees. In fact, the PDP stance was made clear by the concerned minister in the first meeting on May 12 when he gave it in written that the party was not in favour of delimitation of constituencies at this juncture. Sources say that draft of any bill can’t be circulated to any member before the Cabinet gives its formal nod. But the committee, apparently on the directions of the CM went ahead with the exercise.
