‘Azad using money power to prove majority’

Statesman News Service
JAMMU, July 2: The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) launched another attack on chief minister Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad today, alleging he was using "money power" to save his government and prove his majority by 7 July. The PDP refused to rejoin the Congress-led minority government in Jammu and Kashmir, even after its demand for the revocation of land transfer to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board was accepted. “Azad and his cohorts are utilising all the undemocratic means, overtly and covertly, to manage numbers and there have been reports that besides various lucrative offers, even moneybags are being presented to legislators to shift their loyalties,” the PDP alleged in a written statement. Alleging that Mr Azad was already in the process of poaching legislators of various political parties to arrange the required numbers for himself, a PDP spokesman said against all numerical odds, the chief minister has said he has more than adequate numbers to prove his majority in the state legislate assembly. The PDP warned that in the presence of a strict anti-defection law, such unconstitutional tactics will set a severe blow to the hard-earned democratic institutions and processes in the state. The party, which apprehends the defection of some of its MLAs to the Congress, said Mr Azad, who was trumpeting the slogan of "war against corruption" has himself started resorting to the worst kind of political corruption to save his chair. “While the state's major political parties ~ the PDP, National Conference,Panthers Party and BJP have already made it clear that they are not going to support the chief minister during the vote of confidence, the only way Mr Azad could cobble up the numbers is through foul-play and horse-trading,” alleged the PDP. “Although Mr Azad could have succeeded in other parts of the country in making or breaking the governments through such dubious tactics, Jammu and Kashmir is entirely a different case and any move to subvert the democratic institutions here could have a disastrous political fallout," the PDP spokesman said. source: http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=2&theme=&usrsess=1&id=211298