A day after former Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister and Opposition National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah backed the current uprising in Kashmir as “people’s movement”, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti described the statement as a testimony for the NC cadre’s involvement in the unrest and the NC’s eagerness to support disorder in Kashmir in an attempt to regain the lost power.
Abdullah had on Monday attested to the legitimacy of the current unrest that began with the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen leader Burhan Wani who was killed by security forces during an encounter in south Kashmir on July 8 triggering massive public protests. “It is not the matter whether I am with or against Hurriyat leaders, but we are with the people in the ongoing movement,” Abdullah said.
Mufti sharply reacted to the assertion. “The very statement has established his (Abdullah’s) party’s role in the turmoil of past five months,” Mufti said on the dsidelines of a sports event here.
She said during the past months criminal elements infiltrated into the Kashmir’s public domain and got the people killed, properties destroyed and giving the sober society of Kashmir a bad name.
She also criticized Abdullah for declaring Kashmir as a unresolved issue pending resolution since 1947. “In the past Farooq Abdullah was advocating bombardment on Pakistan and threatening to throw the Hurriyat Conference leaders into River Jhelum, “Mufti said adding that Omar Abdullah as the Minister of State for External Affairs in the previous BJP-led government went around globally to propagate Pakistan as a country aiding and abetting terrorism.
“He (Abdullah) has now started singing different tunes. NC can play with any one’s life, even with the lives of women and children, to get power,” Mehbooba said.
Mehbooba said that the NC was favouring disorder to destabkize her government. “With normalcy slowly returning as children going to schools and tourism picking up, Farooq Sahab directs his workers to spoil the situation in the Valley. They (NC) don’t want to let the situation improve,” Mehbooba said.
The Chief Minister said that it was unfortunate when the leader of the oldest political party of the State should console people and ask for restraint, he was just provoking his cadre to aid and abet violence when people of Kashmir have realized its futility and have suffered huge losses financially, physically, educationally and emotionally.
“It has been very unfortunate trait of the NC that they keep chanting Kashmir and other issues of people but once in power they forget the miseries of people,” she said adding the people of Kashmir understand political gimmickry and won’t fall prey to such things.
Reacting to Mufti’s statement, a spokesman of the NC ridiculed the CM for dubbing the civilians killed in the current unrest as “criminals who were attacking camps”.
“For a Chief Minister to say something so crass, inappropriate and out rightly insensitive after months of unimaginable suffering in the Valley is a moment of embarrassment for the entire state”, the NC spokesman said.