Srinagar, Feb 18: An unscheduled flight landed in Srinagar on Wednesday evening, and like a ninja, former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tracked it on his mobile phone and tweeted that something was cooking.
Not long after that, BJP leader Ram Madhav indeed met Mehbooba Mufti to try and end the stasis in Jammu and Kashmir over government formation. Even Madhav had not let on to journalists that he was on his way to Srinagar for the meeting.
Abdullah, who is one of India’s most social media-savvy politicians, used the flight tracker app and detected the chartered plane that landed at an unusual time. He instantly tweeted about it.
The meeting was kept a top secret until Madhav quietly drove into Mufti’s Fair View home in Srinagar. Back in the capital, Madhav’s office insisted that “Sahab is in a meeting in Delhi.”
Mufti’s PDP has set down tough terms to continue the alliance with the BJP. Ties between the ideologically opposite parties have never been easy, but they worsened after the death of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
Madhav and Mufti met one-on-one for an hour. Sources say the meeting is likely to lead to an announcement in the next few days. “It’s at a make or break point. It can go either way,” a source said.
This was the first formal high-level meeting between the two parties over government formation in the state, where Governor’s Rule has been in place since January 8, a day after Mufti Mohammad Sayeed died.
In the meeting, the PDP leader reportedly asserted her demand for a timeline for the Agenda of Alliance that the two parties had agreed to when they came to power last year.
