ET View: J&K may provide a strategic direction to regional oppositional parties across the country

Let's get the fax straight before we come to conjectures. People's Democratic Party and National Conference joining forces (read: numbers) with Congress to claim forming a government in Srinagar is not anti-BJP jatbandhan theorising; it's as real as the politics. Noises about a lust for power bringing together the two arch-rivals of Jammu and Kashmir's political landscape are quite facetious. Even if it's cynicism that makes us less wide-eyed about hatchets being buried for the time being and for a specific purpose, it's as politically kosher as it will be if and when the same hatchets are dug up again. In the presently assymetrical multiverse that is today's Indian politics, unlikely permutations and suspicious combinations are legit, something that Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh could consider taking a cue from.

Now, for the conjectures -- made by J&K governor Satya Pal Malik to dissolve the state assembly after months of keeping it in suspended animation. Perhaps, there is, indeed, a staff crunch in the governor's office which, as the central government's appointed representative hinted at, forced him to either go without food or serve his own meals because of an Eid holiday. But the mystery behind Malik's reported silence to Mehbooba Mufti's letter staking claim, and Malik's order once this letter was made public knowledge after no response from the governor's office, is the stuff that, well, editorial opinions are made of.

Malik has given his reason for the sudden dissolution of the House: everything was hunky dory -- till now, when 'information' of horse-trading bothered him enough to pull the plug. Astrologers find patterns and meanings in stars and planetary pathways. All we can do is find this alignment of events remarkably coicidental. What this portends for Srinagar -- and further gubarnatorial actions -- could provide some strategic direction for regional oppositional forces across the soon-to-go-polling nation.