Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s appeal to the Centre on behalf of all-parties to announce unilateral ceasefire in Kashmir during the upcoming Amarnath yatra and holy month of Ramzan has fallen flat with her own alliance partner—BJP—saying that it did not support the demand in Wednesday’s all-party meeting in Srinagar.
On Thursday, BJP spokesperson Sunil Sethi said that the party did not support the issue that was raised by couple of participants in the meeting.
Sethi countered J-K CM Mehbooba by saying that no opinion of the participants of the meeting was taken on the issue of unilateral ceasefire.
The BJP, Panthers Party and some other parties did not support the suggestion that was put forward by an independent MLA Engineer Rashid, he said.
The BJP, however, supported the suggestion that an all-party delegation should meet the Prime Minister Narendera Modi to discuss the issue of flare up of violence in Kashmir.
CM Mehbooba Mufti had after the all-party meeting in Srinagar announced that there was a consensus on asking the Centre to announce unilateral ceasefire in Kashmir.
The initiative of Mehbooba Mufti to call the all party meeting has turned into yet another controversy with the former Chief Minister and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah saying in a tweet; “What was the point of @MehboobaMufti calling an all party meeting to build a consensus around initiatives in Kashmir when her ally in the Govt doesn’t agree with her! Yet she will shamelessly cling to power because that’s all that matters to her”.
What was the point of @MehboobaMufti calling an all party meeting to build a consensus around initiatives in Kashmir when her ally in the Govt doesn’t agree with her! Yet she will shamelessly cling to power because that’s all that matters to her. https://t.co/HQ6P6yadPT
— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) May 10, 2018
Separatist Mirwaiz Umar Farooq had called the meeting a “farce”.
The deputy Chief Minister, Kavinder Gupta, who also represented the BJP in the crucial meeting, said that ceasefire doesn’t happen on one side. Guns should fall silent from both sides and not only during the upcoming holy month of Ramzan but once for all.
Sethi said that politics should not be played on the sensitive issue when the Army and other security forces have achieved an upper hand in eliminating the terrorists and move to implement unilateral ceasefire was not in the national interest and was bound to affect morale of security forces.
Engineer Rashid most probably raised the demand in a bid to provide an escape corridor to the terrorists who are holed up by the security forces, Sethi alleged.
He said that at the time when the “Operation All Out” of the Army against the terrorists was in its final leg, we should strengthen the hands of security forces and not restrict them by announcing a unilateral ceasefire.
Referring to J-K CM Mehbooba’s claim that PM Modi should announce the unilateral ceasefire on the lines of Atal Behari Vajpayee in 2000, Sethi said that in eighteen years the nature of terrorism in the state has completely changed and such ceasefire was not possible now.
He stressed the need for taking stringent action against stone-pelters who were operating in an organised manner to create chaos in the valley. The government’s experiment of withdrawing cases against nearly 10,000 stone-pelters has not yielded desired results and most of them were again engaged in such activity. Some special force should be raised to tackle with the menace of stone-pelters, he demanded.