Why J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik's unpredictable utterances leave him with few friends

The comparison is inevitable between N.N. Vohra's quietly efficient manner and the incumbent Jammu & Kashmir governor Satya Pal Malik's recurrently outspoken ways that invariably keep him in the thick of controversy. On November 21, he ordered the dissolution of the 87-member state assembly even as the BJP's rivals the People's Democratic Party (PDP), National Conference (NC) and Congress closed ranks to stake a claim to form the government. As expected, Malik's inexplicable move provoked a political snowstorm that refuses to blow over.

Some of this is because the governor smugly sat through several weeks of parleys between the People's Conference (PC) chief Sajjad Lone, the BJP and a group of rebels from the PDP and NC, who were desperately trying to cobble the numbers together to form the government. It was in telling contrast to the alacrity he showed later when former chief ministers Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah, and the Congress, began talking of