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| Omar denounces laws, Congress helpless & silent | | Demilitarisation & anti-terror Laws | | Rustam
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, July 22: Would anyone in the country ever imagine that a government would condemn itself by condemning its own laws? It's a simple and straight question and its answer is equally simple and straight. The answer is a big NO. But here is a state, called Jammu and Kashmir State, whose Chief Minister openly and publicly denounces the anti-terror laws, including Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), as "black laws" as well as "draconian laws" and boasts that he has already started the process of demilitarisation in Kashmir. Here is a Chief Minister who boldly tells the Kashmiri public that he would demilitarise the state during his tenure.
What exactly did Omar Abdullah reportedly say yesterday while addressing the rally organized by his party at Quimu in Kulgam district? He, inter-alia, said: "National Conference (NC)-led government has started the process of demilitarisation from Srinagar…I will get all the draconian laws revoked from the state during my tenure…I still have more than three years in power and I assure you that I will revoke all the draconian laws, including the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), from the state during my tenure…We have already started the process of demilitarisation from Srinagar which was turned into a city of bunkers during the PDP rule. The process will continue in a phased manner… After the completion of his tenure as chief minister, people will not see any military camp outside the towns and villages…He will also demilitarise the state in next three years."
Whatever he said is self-explanatory and whatever he said was nothing but the negation of the very institution of the state. Army is an integral part of a sovereign state and you cannot have a state sans the institution of the army whose fundamental duty it is to defend the borders and defeat the enemy's evil designs.
However, what he said about the army and the anti-terror laws should not surprise anybody. After all, he belongs to that school of thought that considers Jammu and Kashmir a disputed territory; that questions the very accession of the state with India; and that wants "political resolution of the political problem in Kashmir." (Remember, the problem in Kashmir is neither political nor economic; the problem in Kashmir is essentially communal and the bottom-line is secession from India. There should be no doubt it.) The memory of what Omar Abdullah said on the floor of the assembly on October 7, 2010 about the accession still lingers in the minds of the Indian patriots. So, Omar Abdullah only reiterated what he believes and religiously practices.
The question is not what Omar Abdullah said for what he said was what he has been advocating all through. The real question is the criminal silence of the so-called Indian National Congress, his alliance partner. That the Chief Minister would make highly controversial and unsettling statements and that the Congress leadership would keep its moth shut despite grave provocation simply proves that the Congress has no say whatever in the policy-making process and that the only duty of the Congress is to obey the dictates of the Chief Minister as an obedient servant.
It needs to be underlined that it was not for the first time on July 21 that the Chief Minister outraged the nation by making controversial, outrageous and unsettling statements. He has been making such statements right from the day he got the state power on a platter. There had been occasions when the Chief Minister made controversial statements in the presence of the Prime Minister and the Congress ministers in the state, but none of them ever contested the Chief Minister.
However, the Jammu-based Congress leaders do murmur in private and at the party headquarters; they do bemoan the association of the Congress with the NC but not publicly; and they do denounce the Congress high command in private conversations. So meek and helpless is the Congress leadership.
The Congress will have to pay a very heavy price in the days to come for the kind of role it has been playing in the state. It would not be out of place to mention here that the people hold the Congress squarely responsible for what the NC has been systematically doing to unsettle the settled Kashmir issue. Will the Jammu-based Congress leadership muster courage and take on those working against the unity and integrity of India, denigrating the institution of the army and denouncing the anti-terror laws as "draconian"? Indeed, a very, very difficult to answer. |
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