Rustam
JAMMU, Aug 24: Former Union Minister and J&K Chief Minister (Ghulam Nabi Azad (presently lead of opposition on Rajya Sabha) is desperate for some Kashmiri votes for the Congress party, which is a sinking ship and being abandoned by many senior leaders across the country. Azad, who has repeatedly declared that he would not contest the upcoming assembly election, has turned so desperate that he is crossing all the lines to strike a chord with the separatist and communal constituency in Kashmir. Azad, who is mortally afraid of the state electorate and not sure of his victory even in any constituency in Jammu province, for example, on Saturday tried to dig the past and in the process sought to create an impression that NC president and former Union Minister Farooq Abdullah was perhaps kept in loop by the Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde while taking a decision to execute Afzal Guru, who was convicted in the Parliament terror attack case.
"Farooq Abdullah might have been kept in loop about the secret execution of Afzal Guru but he himself was not," he, according to a report, on Saturday said, adding "May be Farooq knew about it, I didn't". Afzal Guru, it bears recalling, was hanged within the premises of Tihar Jail, Delhi, on February 9, 2013 and that was the time when both Azad and Farooq were cabinet ministers in the government of Manmohan Singh. What Azad said yesterday was not an off-the-cuff remark; it was a well-thought out statement. This can be seen from the explanation he gave to establish that he was not kept in loop by the Union home Ministry or the Prime Minister. "It was early in the morning and I was having my shower just when my wife (Shameema Dev) started knocking at the washroom door saying some very important news was being flashedon television," Azad said, adding that "I came out and learnt about it (execution of Guru)".
His statement that "It was too late to do anything" is very significant, notwithstanding the fact that he tried to come clean asfar as the circumstances under which Afzal Guru was executed in Tihar Jail. Significant because he sought to tell the critics of the Government of India that had he been kept in loop, he would have done something for Pakistani terrorist of Kashmir origin and that he couldn't do anything because New Delhi (perhaps) took Farooq Abdullah, and not him, into confidence before executing Afzal Guru. His statements on Farooq Abdullah, who repeatedly said that he didn't know anything about the circumstances under which Guru was hanged, could be construed as a backstabbing, as also as a desperate attempt to further harm the already rather unpopular NC and create for the Congress goodwill in the Valley, something unlikely to happen. Indeed, what Azad said about Farooq was not a good politics, notwithstanding the fact that the NC president's own political conduct all along had been controversial. |
