Congress to stay away from Mehbooba Mufti's swearing-in ceremony

JAMMU: Congress has decided to stay away from tomorrow's swearing-in ceremony of Jammu and Kashmir chief minister-designate Mehbooba Mufti, terming the PDP-BJP coalition as "unholy alliance".

"We have decided to stay away from tomorrow's swearing-in ceremony of chief minister-designate Mehbooba Mufti as this coalition was unholy from the very beginning and they have once again forged this unholy alliance," chief state spokesman of Congress Ravinder Sharma told PTI.

The swearing-in ceremony is scheduled to take place at Raj Bhawan here at 11 am.

"Both PDP and BJP have disrespected the mandate of the people, as they won the mandate by pitting people against each other on all ideological and core issues of Jammu and Kashmir and for the greed of power they decided to come closer," Sharma said.

He said even PDP had admitted that forging an alliance with BJP was an "unpopular decision".

He said Congress's decision to stay away from the swearing -in ceremony was also aimed at marking the protest against the "undemocratic removal" of the Congress governments in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh.

"The BJP-RSS combine has dislodged two democratically- elected governments in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh. They are involved in a conspiracy to dislodge and destabilise Congress-ruled states, hence we decided to stay away from the swearing-in ceremony," Sharma said.