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| Mirwaiz Umar: From darkness to light | | | Early Times Report
Srinagar, Dec 6: His proximity to so-called Kashmir Economic Alliance, has apparently put the senior separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on a course of transformation since 2011. Addressing the Friday prayer assembly at Jamiat Masjid today, Mirwaiz charged the state and the central governments with promoting corruption and exploiting Jammu and Kashmir's mineral resources, hydroelectric power potential in particular. He claimed that the State had capacity to produce more than 25,000 mega watts of power that, according to him, would fetch J&K state receipts worth Rs one lakh crore a year.
It is indisputably the separatist leader's magnanimity that he has begun to think of the poor Kashmiris' comfort, ahead of the inhospitable winter. For those not well versed with the history of the Mirwaiz dynasty, it needs a mention that many of his close relations have served on top positions in the State government.
His wife's uncle is a High Court judge and a legal luminary. One of the young cleric-politician's maternal uncle was a Chief Engineer with Urban Environmental Engineering Department, another a Chief Engineer with Power Development Department and yet another Managing Director of J&K State Road Transport Corporation. Mirwaiz himself is an alumnus of the prestigious Burnhall School in Srinagar before he passed his his graduation and post-graduation with distinction. It was only his Ph D that became suspect in the wake of reports in media that Mirwaiz had actually got his thesis "stolen" from a Kashmir University professor. The purported real author did not claim the book reportedly for fear of the gun on the separatist leader's back.
A man of Mirwaiz Umar's exposure and talent is supposed to be aware of the fact that much more than the power "plundered" by NHPC, it is the government of Pakistan that has grabbed the state's power resource through the "illegitimate" Indus Water Treaty. Three of the six major rivers passing through Jammu and Kashmir have been, in Mirwaiz Umar's language, "grabbed" by Islamabad in a quid pro quo with New Delhi.
In other words, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have suffered cumulative loss to the tune of hundreds of crores of Rupees in the last 52 years. Had the same bargaining been done with a beneficiary different from Pakistan, Mirwaiz would have raised uproar, called for shutdown after shutdown and issues statements of condemnation. It has been noted with perceptible cynicism by the younger generation in Kashmir that neither Mirwaiz nor KEC has uttered a word over the Indus Water Treaty. Obviously, they can not as it could annoy Islamabad.
One would expect Mirwaiz to be truthful, bold and honest in portrayal of the facts afflicting the hapless population in the Valley. That alone with make him the people's leader and lend credence to the bulletins of his daily statements and weekly sermons. |
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