NEW DELHI: India’s ruling Congress party is divided on the issue of clemency to Parliament terror attack convict  Mohammad Afzal Guru. Jammu and Kashmir CM Ghulam Nabi Azad has demanded clemency. His deputy has opposed it. Congress leader Digvijay Singh went public to demand that he should be hanged. Comgress’ ally in Kashmir, the PDP party of Mufti Mohd Sayed has backed Azad’s plea for clemency. The Left is also divided. The CPI(M) has not uttered a word. Its J and K MLA Yusuf Tarigami has pleaded for clemency. But the party hasn’t said if this was indeed the CPI(M) view. In the UPA-Left coordination committee meeting, the CPI(M) did not raise the issue.

The CPI only asked the Union Home Minister about the legal position on converting the death sentence  into life imprisonment. M S Bitta of the Congress is raising a loud pitch to see Afzal  hanging from the gallows.The Congress hasn’t asked him to sit back and wait for the  official party line. BJP’s L K Advani rushed to meet President APJ Abdul Kalam to plead that Afzal be hanged. The President of course gave a patient hearing to Afzal’s family. Lawyers Nandita Haksar and N D Pancholi accompanied Afzal’s family, including his son Ghalib named after perhaps the most famous poet from the sub-continent.

The Jammu and Srinagar units of the Congress are split on the issue. Neither PM Manmohan Singh nor Congress chief Sonia Gandhi have referred to the issue even remotely. JKLF leader Yasin Malik has met top Left leadership but drew a blank. In New  York, Kashmir’s chief Muslim cleric and leader of a faction of the Huriyat conference alliance, Mirwaiz  Umar Farooq, has taken up the issue with senior Bush administration officials. But as often happens, the Punjab Akalis and Congressmen are mum. They are not even using the occasion and the  public mood to at least bring the focus upon Davinder Pal Singh Bhullar. Meanwhile , Afzal continues to have the status of a death row convict as the President awaits word from the Union Home Ministry to whom he has passed on the mercy petition received from Afzal’s family. The only certainty is that the hanging will not take place this month and the Ramzan, Diwali and Eid will pass off before Afzal will know his fate.Meanwhile, India’s fate is a split mind.