PDP leader Muzaffar Baig has set a six-month deadline for Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti
Senior Peoples Democratic Party leader Muzaffar Hussain Baig has said that his party's Mehbooba Mufti should step down as Jammu and Kashmir chief minister if an agenda of alliance agreed upon with ally BJP is not implemented in the state.
He set a deadline for Ms Mufti's resignation, telling NDTV, "in six months if there is no progress, it will be honourable for the chief minister to resign."
Mr Baig has been vocal about his worry that ruling party, the PDP, is the direct target of people's anger as the Kashmir Valley is rocked by a cycle of violence that has left 70 people dead and thousands injured in clashes with security forces ever since Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani was killed in July.
"The PDP is being hurt and discredited by the alliance agreement not implemented," he said today.
PDP lawmaker Muzaffar Baig speaks to NDTV
Mr Baig also questioned the BJP's commitment to the partnership, asking, "I was told Prime Minister Modi backed this alliance; why doesn't he lead the way?
Mr Baig has earlier said that while the BJP continues to be strong in Jammu, the region of the state it dominated in elections two years ago, the PDP has been losing ground in the Kashmir Valley, where it won all its seats.
In the 2014 assembly election, J&K had voted in a hung assembly with no party getting a majority. After weeks of negotiations ideological opposites the PDP, which was the largest party, and the BJP, which came in second, formed an alliance with Mehbooba Mufti's father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed as Chief Minister.
With polar positions on many crucial issues like Article 370, which grants special autonomous status to Kashmir and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the two parties had built their alliance based on a common agenda.
Several senior leaders of the PDP have accused partner BJP, which rules at the Centre, of not delivering on key points of the agenda.
When her father died in office in January this year, Ms Mufti did not commit to the alliance for three months. When she finally agreed to take his place as chief minister, she made the implementation of the alliance of agenda a key deliverable for the partnership.