PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti on Monday extended her “full support” to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin for his move to bring opposition parties on one platform to fight the BJP.
Extending her support to Stalin, Mehbooba tweeted; “I appreciate @mkstalin ji’s initiative to get opposition parties on one platform to thwart BJPs communal & divisive agenda. PDP extends its full support”.
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam president and Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin had appealed to 37 political parties and leaders to jointly fight the threat of “bigotry and religious hegemony to India’s diverse and multicultural federation”.
DMK chief also announced the launch of an ‘All India Federation for Social Justice’ as a common platform for the promotion of social justice and to bring about a common minimum programme to be uniformly adopted across states. In his letter, Stalin asked various non-BJP parties to join the platform and nominate representatives to the same.
Mehbooba, who had earlier also supported West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s move of opposition unity, in her letter to Stalin said that “we are witnessing India’s worrying lurch towards authoritarianism and attempts to establish religious hegemony seeking to impose one language, one religion and one culture over its countrymen”.
“This sinister agenda shows scant regard for constitutional values such as equality, fraternity, religious freedom, diversity and civil liberties that served as the foundation of the country”.
Referring to abrogation of Article 370, Mehbooba wrote; “Unfortunately the process of constitutional harakiri and trampling over the spirit of cooperative federalism was initiated in Jammu and Kashmir with the illegal and unconstitutional revocation of its special status and subsequent dismemberment and downgrading our state into a Union Territory”.
“In the past 3 years, not a single day goes by when our people aren’t humiliated, punished, and disempowered by the government of India under the pretext of national integration by passing new laws and policies unilaterally”, she wrote.
Mehbooba wrote to Stalin that “A dangerous concoction of religious bigotry, pseudo-nationalism, and othering minorities have become so deeply intertwined that most opposition leaders refrain from taking a clear stand fearing a backlash from a misinformed and misguided vote bank”.
“The people of J&K who chose a secular and pluralistic India over a theocratic country feel disillusioned and deeply let down by the present government”.
“This atmosphere of rampant suppression and suffocation since August 2019 has become the new normal in J&K. The breakneck speed at which the government of India has rammed anti-people laws such as NRC, CAA followed by the farm laws has confirmed my fears that this is just the beginning of the end of federalism in our country. I believe as responsible opposition leaders we must unite and strive to ensure that the present government doesn’t succeed in replacing the constitution with it hateful and divisive party agenda and destroy the idea of India as envisaged by Gandhi ji”, she added.