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| 'Super Cabinet' meets behind closed doors to control Kashmir unrest | | |
Hyder Ali
Early Times Report
srinagar, Sept 28: Even as the state government struggles to restore law and order in restive Kashmir, a "Super Cabinet" has overtaken others to actively explore "resources to accomplish the mission of getting back peace" in the Valley.
Sources said for the past around a month, immediately after the routine meeting held to review the situation is over, a group of "high-profile people" close to the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) top brass call on Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti for a "secret meeting."
Sources said apart from the PDP minister nicknamed Birbal, his party colleague and MLA from Srinagar, who in the first innings of the alliance with the BJP was a prominent minister, arrived at the venue.
This core team is joined by a former police official, who was a Senior Superintendent of Police during the 2010 unrest and happens to be a "PDP loyalist." Apart from them, an official, who was "sidelined from lucrative posts" during the brief Governor rule, is also taken into confidence for the closed-door meeting.
"This team of five to six persons hold regular meetings with the Chief Minister on what should be done to bring back Kashmir on the track of normalcy," said a senior official in the Civil Secretariat asking not to be named.
The group is believed to be "exploring options to bring reforms in the grassroots of Kashmir society for resumption of peace and to rope in civil society for requisite deliberations." "They give feedback and decide future course of action," sources said.
Sources said given the supremacy in execution of plans as made by this group, official machinery has named them as "Super Cabinet."
"They were actually named so by a senior PDP leader who resigned from the party sometime back. Though he would often ridicule this core team and label them as conspirators and Chamchas, the fact is that, Govt believes in this core team the most," the sources said.
Insiders said initially when protests erupted in Kashmir in the wake of killing of militant commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani and his two colleagues on July 8, the former police official, close to PDP would attend some crucial meetings to decide on tackling the unrest. "But as some of the officials felt it unethical, he stopped attending formal meetings. We thought such faces have disappeared from the scene till we recently discovered that they have graduated to be 'Super Cabinet', which wields more influence on decision-making than what the routine official machinery does," the official added.
Since the day Kashmir erupted, the government has been holding regular meetings to review the situation. The meetings held in the evenings, mostly at the residence of the Chief Minister were attended by ministers, apart from senior officials from police and civil administration.
But such meetings had become more of "symbolic affair." "These meetings had become more of ritual as ministers would mostly remain busy with their smart phones while as senior officials in police felt that their precious needed to take measures to control unrest on the ground went waste in boardroom chitchat where some of the ministers wanted their wisdom to prevail over code of policing," explained an official privy to such meetings.
Even though despite some "veiled-resentment" the government went ahead with the review meetings, "Super Cabinet" has emerged "most influential".
A senior PDP leader told Early Times that the "Super Cabinet" is so powerful that at times it scrutinizes the proceedings of the general meetings. "We speak a lot but it's mainly they who take final call on what others suggest and what practically needs to be done. This is what I personally feel," said a PDP leader.
Despite repeated attempts the "Super Cabinet" could not be contacted for comments. |
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