On the one hand, Mehbooba Mufti has raised the slogan for unity among the Kashmir-centric political parties on the issue of the current situation in the valley, but on the other hand, in a bid to retrieve PDP’s eroded base, she is losing no opportunity to hit at its arch-rival National Conference (NC).
Mehbooba had, on Monday, urged the NC chief Farooq Abdullah to convene an all-party meeting to discuss the issue that has arisen out of the deployment of 10,000 additional paramilitary personnel in the valley.
Although Governor’s adviser K Vijay Kumar has clarified that the additional forces have come to strengthen the security grid and not for any other purpose, Mehbooba continues to create an impression as if the exercise was for abrogating the controversial Article 35A.
On the one hand, she is talking of unity among the political parties in Kashmir, but leaders of PDP and NC were making scathing attacks at each other and trying to extract maximum political mileage out of the anxiety that prevails in the valley.
Former chief minister Omar Abdullah was not in favour of Mehbooba’s abrupt move to seek the all-party meeting. “Wait before calling senior leaders from other parties in J&K to discuss the current situation it’s important to try to understand from the Central Govt about their intentions for the state & also how they see the situation at the moment. This is what @JKNC- is focused on,” he tweeted.
National Conference senior leader Tanvir Sadiq accused the PDP and Sajad Lone’s People’s Conference (PC) of putting the state in peril by opening the doors to “communal forces”.
“PDP which had sought the people’s mandate to keep BJP out during campaign of 2014 assembly elections formed an alliance with the same BJP. While sharing power with BJP, PDP chose to put on blinkers. They sacrificed the state’s fiscal autonomy and now they claim to protect the same autonomy. How is it possible?” Sadiq said while addressing a meet of party functionaries and workers at Lal Bazar in Zadibal assembly constituency.
“Today we see Mehbooba Mufti pledging to protect the state’s special status, while she was the one who damaged it during her stint as Chief Minister,” he alleged.
Mehbooba’s trusted, PDP General Secretary Ghulam Nabi Lone Hanjura, termed it “unfortunate” that the NC leadership, in order to score brownie points within the party is busy “spreading lies and hoodwinking people”.
Talking about the contentious Article 370 that provides special status to J&K, Hanjura recalled the speech of NC founder Sheikh Abdullah on the floor of the state legislative assembly on March 2, 1981 in which he claimed that the Sheikh declared Jammu and Kashmir’s special status as a major roadblock in state’s prosperity and development and stated that Article 370 was not a Quranic verse that cannot be amended.
He added that history bears testimony to the fact that it was NC that has “bulldozed” the institutions of democracy and justice in the state and the emergence of PDP on state’s political landscape was only to thwart NC’s “nefarious designs”.
He said that the PDP government engaged the top lawyers of the country to defend the state’s special status in the Supreme Court and has been declaring it incontestable and irrevocable at all podiums and platforms.