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Onkar Singh in Srinagar
Jammu and Kashmir Congress Committee president Ghulam Nabi Azad will formally stake his claim to form the next government in the state on Wednesday morning.
Azad, who was elected leader of the Congress legislature party on Monday, has sought an appointment with Governor Girish Chandra Saxena for 1000 IST on Wednesday.
Azad is expected to submit a list of 35 legislators who have promised to support his government and seek three weeks' time to prove his strength on the floor of the new assembly. He needs 44 MLAs' support in the 87-member House.
Besides the 20 legislators of the Congress, Azad has so far gained the support of four members of the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party, two of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), three independents elected from the Ladakh region, and six other independents, who have come together to form the People's Democratic Forum along with the CPI-M.
Talks with the Jammu and Kashmir People's Democratic Party led by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed have so far failed to make a breakthrough on the single most important point of dispute: who will be chief minister?
Ved Bhasin, editor-in-chief of the Kashmir Times, is playing mediator and the Congress hopes the PDP will come around by Wednesday because the Mufti does not have the numbers required to form the government.
But if it does not, one of the central Congress politicians camping in Srinagar to oversee the installation of the new government told rediff.com, a rift is brewing within the PDP and a 'sizeable number' of the three-year-old party's legislators would leave once Azad formed the government.
Earlier, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, Marxist MLA from Kulgam and leader of the PDF, said he had floated a 'formula', the details of which he refused to disclose, to resolve the differences between the Congress and the PDP.
Tarigami met Azad and the central Congress politicians in Srinagar and discussed his formula with them. He said he had got a favourable response not only from the Congress leaders, but also from the PDP, and a new government would be in place by Wednesday.
Azad told reporters that he appreciated Tarigami's efforts, but the PDP should understand that the Congress was the second largest party in the new assembly after the National Conference and it should be allowed to head the government.
Additional reportage by the Press Trust of India
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