Early Times Report
Srinagar, July 24: Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday trained her guns at Pakistan for instigating youth in Kashmir to take up arms, saying it has to change its policy.
"Today when a Kashmiri child takes up gun, they (Pakistan) call him leader and say he is doing good, but when their own children, some from madrassas etc take up gun, they attack them with drones and hang them in military courts. I feel Pakistan, which is viewed by people of Kashmir with sympathy, has this time committed excess," Mehbooba told reporters here.
"If they instigate our children to pick up gun and then say you will become our leader if you get killed in encounter, then I think they need to change this policy," Mehbooba said.
The Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister was speaking on a day she met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh who took stock of situation in the Valley .
"Pakistan says that we are victims of terror, their 146 children were killed in school attack in single day and people fear to go inside their mosques," Mehbooba said, Hitting out at the neighbouring country for encouraging violence in Kashmir, the Chief Minister said there is a need to take "bold measures to address the issue as the people of Jammu and Kashmir were our own".
She said there was an opportunity just for the whole country but for Pakistan as well to have a dialogue and address the issue.
Mehbooba said a start has to be made from somewhere to improve the situation in the state and suggested revocation of AFSPA from some areas, beginning with 25 to 50 police stations, as an experiment.
"As far as AFSPA is concerned, we were not saying that it should be revoked in one go. But, as a test case, on experimental basis, if it is revoked slowly and it can be seen how the situation remained in such areas. If the situation remained well, then it should be revoked entirely or it can be re-implemented if you feel that militancy did not allow it to be revoked," the Chief Minister said.
"The start has to be from somewhere, the experiments have to be from somewhere like it (AFSPA) be revoked from 25 or 40 police stations to see the reaction," she said.
Mehbooba said her father Mufti Mohammed Sayeed took two month to forge an alliance with the BJP and made an agenda of alliance to show a way to take JK "Out of the morass and that cannot be done only by money or packages". |
