Farooq Abdullah says no one can break the National Conference after meeting upset MLAs

National Conference president Farooq Abdullah said on Friday that his party remains united and cannot be broken, after meeting a group of legislators who have been openly unhappy with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s recent cabinet expansion.

“False news that the National Conference is breaking is completely wrong,” Abdullah told reporters in Srinagar after the meeting at the Chief Minister’s official residence. He called the party a jamaat, an organisation, and said those who hoped to break it would not succeed.

Around 15 NC MLAs were reported to have met Abdullah and his son, the Chief Minister, on Gupkar Road to set out their grievances over the reorganisation of the council of ministers and the way the party and government are run.

‘Their problems were genuine’

Abdullah did not dismiss the complaints. “We have talked to them, their problems were genuine, they were listened to very well, and some steps will be taken quickly,” he said, adding that other changes would come more slowly. The aim, he said, was that the legislators “will strengthen the party and the government so that the problems of the people are resolved.”

He used the moment to restate the party’s central demands. “Our fight for statehood will continue, and so will our fight for Article 370 and Article 35A,” he said.

Nazir Ahmad Khan Gurezi, the MLA who had been chosen to take the dissidents’ memorandum to the party president, played down talk of a breakaway group. “We are legislators of the National Conference. We come to our party leadership with our issues every time,” he said. “No separate party has emerged from the National Conference.”

He said the group had sat together for the last few days and that social media had made more of it than there was. The leadership, he said, had assured them that some issues, political and otherwise, would be addressed immediately.

How the row began

The trouble started on October 27, when Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha swore in four new ministers, Ali Mohammad Sagar, Mir Saifullah, Shameema Firdous and Altaf Kalo, taking the council to its maximum strength of nine. Senior figures such as six-time Eidgah MLA Mubarak Gul were left out.

Three days later, about 17 NC MLAs and an Independent met in Srinagar, passed a resolution against what they called “coterie culture” and “unilateral decisions”, and gave the two Abdullahs a 15-day deadline for a fresh reshuffle. That deadline runs to the middle of November.

Abdullah did not say which steps would come first, or whether any minister would be moved. The legislators have not published their list of demands.