NC MLAs to elect leader today in J&K Assembly

Srinagar, Oct 9: The Legislature Party of the National Conference will meet on Thursday to elect their leader in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly as party president Farooq Abdullah maintained that his son Omar Abdullah will be the first chief minister of the Union Territory.

The NC on Tuesday emerged as the single largest party with 42 seats as results of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly polls were declared. The party is comfortably placed to form the government as its alliance with Congress and CPI (M) got 49 seats in the 95-member house.

“The National Conference legislature party will meet tomorrow at half-past 12 to elect their leader,” the party vice president said.

Omar Abdullah said the NC legislature party meeting will be followed by a meeting of the alliance partners to elect the leader of the alliance in the House.

“Then we will go to the Raj Bhavan to stake the claim for government formation and ask the LG to fix a time for swearing in,” Omar Abdullah said, adding, “I hope the new government is in place in the next few days”.

However, NC president Farooq Abdullah asserted his supremacy over the choice of person who will head the government.

Reacting to his son's statement that the alliance will decide the chief minister, the NC patriarch said, “Whatever I have decided, only that will happen”.

Farooq Abdullah said the aim of the NC-Congress government would be to minimise the differences between the two regions of the Union Territory and to build confidence among the Hindus.

In an apparent reference to the BJP, he said, “We have to minimize the differences that they have created between Jammu and Kashmir. Our endeavour should be that the Hindus there have this confidence in us that we will think about them in the same manner as about Kashmir”.

“We will not differentiate between the two. So what if they did not vote (for us). It is our duty to solve their problems,” Abdullah told reporters here.