The likes of Omar Abdullah, Farooq Abdullah, Er Rasheed and Shah Faesal may be crying against BJP in panel discussions telecast live by news channels and public rallies held as part of campaign for the unannounced assembly elections in the state but they are the ones opening doors to the former ministers and legislators of Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) quitting their party day in and day out taking no notice of their more than three year long collaboration with BJP under the leadership of late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti the PDP President one after the other . Interestingly Sajad Gani Lone the Peoples’ Conference Chairman is the only leader who has been defending his party’s collaboration with BJP since 2014 assembly elections and as such opening gates of his party to leaders of PDP who till yesterday were collaborators of BJP is not a deviation from his earlier position on alliance with BJP but the fact remains that defending the indefensible alliance of his party Peoples Conference does not make him (Sajad Gani Lone) sacrosanct keeping in view the core political of his father late Khawaja Abdul Gani Lone after whose death he took over the reigns of Peoples Conference as his political inheritor. It makes no sense when National Conference President Farooq Abdullah and Vice President Omar Abdullah the two former Chief Ministers question the wisdom of late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Mehbooba Mufti and Sajad Gani Lone on the alliance of their parties with the BJP but themselves open doors to the former ministers and legislators quitting PDP for the reasons of political conveniences forgetting all about their association with two successive coalition governments of which BJP was a major ally under the leadership of late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti respectively.
Interestingly the former ministers and legislators quitting PDP and joining National Conference and other mainstream parties were known for playing central role in stitching PDP’s alliance with BJP and they also used to deliver sermons on the workability of the PDP-BJP coalition government on the floor of state assembly prior to its sudden collapse in June last year. Shah Faesal the bureaucrat –turned-politician defends a former minister joining his party saying that the minister was honest and a genuine grass root level political worker. Faesal has to understand that working with honesty and integrity may be the sole criteria for adjudging the performance of a bureaucrat but a politician has to show political morality to win over the hearts and minds of the people and defection of a politician from one party to the other for the reasons of political convenience is the biggest disqualification for any politician. Abdullahs’, Sajad Gani Lone, Shah Faesal and Er Rasheed have to understand that deserters of Muftis’ can’t be their loyalists and better it would for them to deny entry of any PDP defector into their parties in future.