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| Nothing new in Sinha's report on fall of PDP-BJP govt | | | Early Times Report
jammu, July 1: Former External Affairs Minister and Vajpayee's and LK Advani's right hand man, Yashwant Sinha and some members of his so-called Concerned Citizens' Group (CCG) again visited Kashmir. This time, after the fall of the Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP-BJP coalition government. After their return to Delhi, Sinha & Co made public their report on Jammu & Kashmir. It contained nothing new. It simply reported what people in Kashmir (not in Jammu and Ladakh) told him and his team members. In fact, they only quoted what the people in Kashmir told them. In other words, Sinha & Co acted as their spokesperson.
According to Sinha, "Most Kashmiris believe that the manner in which the BJP masterminded the fall of the Mehbooba Mufti-led coalition government had little to do with the situation in the valley". "The local perception is that the withdrawal of support was a part of a grand strategy of the BJP with an eye on the 2019 general election," the Sinha report said.
"The common perception was that the Narendra Modi government had nothing much to showcase in terms of its achievements for the 2019 general election, there were no new fault lines emerging in Indian polity which could be exploited electorally - hence the fall-back option of using Kashmir to communally polarize the electorate in the state as well as the rest of India. The Kashmiris think that the harder the slap on their face, the better the electoral fallout in the rest of India. Most are reconciled, however, to the fact that they have been reduced to a pawn in the larger politics of the BJP," the report further said.
Sinha didn't really buy the argument advanced by BJP national president Amit Shah in Jammu during his visit on June 23 that the BJP withdrew its support to Mehbooba Mufti-led coalition government because the situation under Mehbooba Mufti's rule had worsened and that her government ignored both Jammu and Ladakh and focused only on Kashmir and a particular community.
"The BJP perhaps felt that by going along with the PDP, an impression was gaining ground that the party favoured secessionists and her policies were more focused on the Kashmir Valley to the detriment of Jammu and Ladakh," the report on Jammu & Kashmir said.
The report based on what people in Kashmir told to Sinha and his team members, however, said that the BJP played very smartly and saved itself from embarrassed at the national level by pulling out first from the Mehbooba Mufti government.
"The Kashmiris tend to think that the PDP was taken by surprise by the timing of the development as the chief minister was holding meetings at the state secretariat, including the one with the Centre's interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma on 19 June, when her fate was being decided in Delhi. Had she known what was coming, they felt, she herself would have withdrawn support to pre-empt the BJP and gained political mileage," the Sinha report in this regard said.
At the same time, the report gave everyone to understand that the fall of the PDP-BJP government didn't shock anyone. Claiming that the situation in Kashmir was "alarming" and did not show any signs of improvement, Sinha & Co said: "The overall political and security situation in the Kashmir valley did not show any indication of improvement. While the general public was shedding no tears after the collapse of the BJP-PDP alliance, it was also not enthused by the imposition of Governor's rule. There was a sense of dejection and expectation of worse to come as the discourse on Kashmir seemed to be becoming more aggressive by the day".
Sinha and his team members also had something to say in their report about unilateral ceasefire and the possibility of so-called peace initiative. Referring to the Union Government's "unilateral ceasefire" for the month of Ramzan, their report said: "Most of the Kashmiris felt that there were two positive outcomes of the truce - civilian killings and incidents of stone-pelting by protestors came down drastically as there were no offensive operations. And as a result youngsters did not get in retaliatory action by the security forces. The security forces did not move out unless they had specific information about the presence of militants. This created a positive feeling among the common people". In other words, the report virtually endorsed the view of the former CM Mehbooba Mufti that unilateral ceasefire had a very positive impact on the Kashmir situation.
To be more precise, Sinha & Co hardly took cognizance of the concerns as expressed by intelligence agencies and bemoaned the decision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi government to turn down Mehbooba Mufti's request that ceasefire be extended for at least two more months.
As for the so-called peace initiative, Sinha said: "No one expected the Modi government to take a peace initiative. People were already looking beyond the next general election due in April-May 2019 and hoping for a change in Delhi's policies after that. Until then the people believed that harsh security measures or 'danda-raj', as they called it, was likely to continue as the dominant doctrine, irrespective of who implemented it. The change of guard in Srinagar would make no difference. The political space in the valley has shrunk and along with it the prospect of a dialogue for peace has also become distant".
One may put in any amount of efforts to find if Sinha & Co even once talked about Jammu and Ladakh and aspirations of the people of these two neglected reasons, one would come out of the exercise minus everything. And they had ignored these people in their earlier reports as well. |
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