Srinagar, October 27 (HS): The National Conference has refused to treat the voices of discontent that followed the cabinet expansion as a serious crisis. Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Kumar Choudhary dismissed it as making a mountain out of a molehill and urged the media not to turn it into a spectacle. Minister Sakina Itoo said that disgruntled leaders and workers are expressing their opinion within the party, which is their democratic right and cannot be called a protest.

Speaking to the media, Surinder Kumar Choudhary said: “My appeal to you all is not to make a mountain out of a molehill. There is nothing here. This is normal.” Questioning the attitude of the media in Jammu and Kashmir, he said that when the expansion was not happening, it was talked about every day, and now that it has taken place, a fresh debate has begun. According to him, if the media wishes well for the people of Jammu and Kashmir, it should give the new ministers a chance to work.

Choudhary said: “You yourselves used to say that five ministers were overburdened with work. Now four more ministers have been added, but unless you give them a chance to work, how will they show their performance?”

He compared the discontent within the party to a matter inside the home. “As far as the family is concerned, don’t ups and downs happen in your homes? Don’t you ever have minor frictions with one another? They do, but do you go beating drums about it? So please don’t try to make a spectacle of it. My appeal is that you take it in a healthy way. We know what you are up to,” he said.

Minister Sakina Itoo said that the decision on names for the cabinet was taken by the party leadership and that everyone in the party stands with it. “Whether it is our honourable MLAs or the party’s office-bearers, we are all one and we work for the party,” she said. She said, it is the leadership’s prerogative where to place whom, and it does not mean, God forbid, that anyone lacks competence or is unfit for a ministry. She said everyone is equal, and that those who did not get a chance now will, God willing, get one in future.

Itoo said the party has thousands of responsibilities in which people can work, while MLAs are strong at their own level and are working there.

Asked about protests, she said: “Where is the protest happening? It is not happening on the road. If some people, workers, are expressing displeasure, they are doing it at their party headquarters and nowhere else.” She said the party has given them the democratic right to express their opinion. In her words, they are expressing opinion, not protesting.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Zahoor Hussain Bhat