Saddled in the Chief Minister’s ‘hot seat,’ all eyes are now on Mehbooba Mufti as she is scheduled to chair her maiden Unified Command (UC) meeting next week. Ahead of the peak tourist season in the State and already grappling with unrest in Kashmir valley, the UC meeting held to fine-tune coordination between different wings of the counter-insurgency grid, will reflect how she goes about handling the security situation on ground zero.
Mehbooba has indicated that she will carry forward the ‘healing touch’ policy piloted by her late father. Her first litmus test will be the peaceful conduct of annual Amarnath Yatra. Second, if the State Government decides to hold municipal polls in the State, ensuring the safety of candidates at the grass-roots level would be an uphill task in the wake of mushrooming of local cadre in North and South districts of Kashmir.
The meeting will also take place in the backdrop of reports that more than 250 trained militants are present in the Valley and they are likely to step up levels of violence in the coming weeks. Moreover, several educated young men are joining militant groups like Hizbul Mujahideen from towns like Pulwama and Kupwara in south Kashmir. The new Chief Minister will thus have to devise a strategy to wean these impressionable men from path of violence, sources said.
During her first high-level meeting with top police officials of Kashmir last week, Mehbooba dropped clear hints about her inclination to follow the ‘healing touch’ policy. During her hour-long interaction with the senior officers, she directed them to strictly adhere to the Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs) while dealing with law and order issues and laid emphasis on better crowd management by using innovative methods to safeguard human lives.
After holding review meetings with the administrative secretaries of different departments and chairing the first Cabinet meeting on April 11, Mehbooba is scheduled to chair the meeting of the UC in the coming week, officials said.
Headed by the Chief Minister, the UC comprises all the stakeholders including the Army, Central Reserve Police Force, Border Security Force, Jammu & Kashmir Police and Intelligence agencies. The overarching body devises anti-infiltration and counter-insurgency strategy and reviews the performance of various agencies at regular intervals.
During the upcoming meeting, Mehbooba is expected to pass necessary instructions to the senior operational commanders of all security forces to minimise confrontation with the civilian population in remote areas of the State especially falling closer to the North Kashmir district of Kupwara and south Kashmir district of Pulwama.
These districts have seen fierce encounters between the security forces and militants in the last three months, besides increased levels of infiltration from across the line of Control. More than 25 militants are believed to have sneaked in as compared to almost nil in the last few years in the winter months.
Moreover, 28 terrorists were killed in the hinterland, including troubled south Kashmir districts in the last three months and security forces are bracing for a "hot summer" this year, officials said. They admitted the current trend indicates that infiltration bids will not decline when all the ingress routes open after snow has melted.
Apart from devising a strategy to deter terrorists from scaling up levels of violence, Mehbooba's test will be peaceful conduct of annual Amarnath Yatra and ensuring peace in the Valley during the peak tourist season to attract more visitors.
In the last one decade, different Chief Ministers have adopted different approaches when it came to handling the security situation. The late Mufti Mohd Sayeed in alliance with the Congress between 2002 and 2005 anchored the 'healing touch' policy but when Ghulam Nabi Azad (Congress) took over as the Chief Minister, he adopted the 'bullet for bullet' policy.
In 2009 when Omar Abdullah of National Conference became the youngest Chief Minister of the State, he once again introduced the Rehabilitation and Surrender policy for the surrendered militants and motivated them to return to the mainstream by returning home through designated routes approved by the Union Home Ministry.