Crucial cabinet meeting in J&K on Saturday

Jammu: A crucial cabinet meeting will be held here on Saturday to hammer out a solution for creating more than 700 administrative units in Jammu and Kashmir amid reports that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was planning to resign if he did not have his way on the matter.

Congress leaders were working overtime in New Delhi to sort out the matter as National Conference had been maintaining that the move was people-friendly and the beneficiary would be the alliance partners. National Conference (NC) and Congress have been running a coalition government in the state with Omar heading it for over five years now. The state Congress leaders have been stonewalling the proposal of creating over 700 administrative units, saying that it did not cover the entire state, a charge denied by the NC which feels that the move was justified and would help in governance at the grassroot level. The state cabinet will consider the report of Deputy Chief Minister Tarachand led Cabinet Sub Committee (CSC) which had been asked to go into the Mushtaq Ganaie Committee report which calls for creating the new units. "There is a Cabinet meeting tomorrow. We hope that the number of (administrative) units recommended by the CSC and Ganaie report are put together and the state Cabinet accepts one total report," AICC General Secretary Ambika Soni, who is incharge of Jammu and Kashmir, told PTI here. NC was now maintaining a studied silence to see how its alliance partner -- Congress -- behaved at the meeting tomorrow which will be held in the afternoon. NC President and Union Minister Farooq Abdullah had said that it depended now on the state Chief Minister to decide on the future course of action. The CSC was constituted in July last year to go into the recommendations made by the Mushtaq Ganaie report for creation of new administrative units in the state. After a delay in the submission of the CSC report, a reluctant Omar last week gave seven more days time for the panel which is now expected to submit it tomorrow. The CSC has suggested creation of nearly 2,100 new administrative units in the state as against 700 recommended by the Ganaie Committee. Earlier, Tarachand, who was called for consultations by the Congress leaders in Delhi a couple of times in the space of five days, had said "the Mushtaq Ganaie Committee had recommended 700 new administrative units but the figure may go up to 2,000 or more."