Kashmir deadlock resolved after Farooq Abdullah invokes Sonia Gandhi's intervention

The four ministers who attended the meeting included Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand, Irrigation and Flood Control Minister Sham Lal Sharma and Urban Development Minister Nawang Rigzin Jora of the Congress, and Agriculture Minister Ghulam Hassan Mir, who is a Congress nominee in the cabinet.

"The deadlock was finally resolved after the sub-committee members were advised to submit their report to the cabinet recommending over 2,000 new administrative units in the state," top Congress sources told IANS.

The state government had set up a commission which had recommended 900 new administrative units and the NC wanted to go ahead with this.

The state Congress leaders had been terming the move "politically motivated as it would benefit only the NC in the Valley and damage the political base of the Congress in the Jammu region".

Now that the Congress high command has stepped in, this is believed to have addressed the state party's concerns "of a holistic and equitable approach" to setting up the new administrative units, as a Congress minister put it without agreeing to be named.

Omar Abdullah, who went to summer capital Srinagar Tuesday and then decided to spend the night at north Kashmir's Gulmarg ski resort, has been asked to come to New Delhi Wednesday after the storm over the new administrative units finally settled down.