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| Privilege motion against Baig | | NC supporters attack Ansari’s business center, Baig’s house in Valley-wide angry protests | | AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Jul 29: Even as Speaker Mohammad Akbar Lone today admitted 12 of the ruling coalition members’ motion on breach of privilege against the opposition PDP leader Muzaffar Hussain Baig amid hours of mayhem in the Legislative Assembly and the PDP MLAs tore off documents, National Conference (NC) supporters staged strong protests against the former Deputy Chief Minister and attacked his houses, both in Srinagar and Baramulla. On Tuesday, Baig had forced the Chief Minister to resign after he claimed that Mr Omar Abdullah’s name had figured among nearly 200 influential persons allegedly involved in the infamous Srinagar Sex Scandal of year 2006.
Obviously emboldened by CBI’s clean chit to Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, NC today launched a multi-pronged counter-offensive on the opposition party and selected two of the senior leaders of PDP---Muzaffar Hussain Baig and Maulvi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari---as its first target. Reports said that infuriated NC supporters staged protest demonstrations against Baig and Mehbooba Mufti at nearly 20 places in the capital city of Srinagar and other district headquarters in Kashmir valley. They shouted slogans against the PDP leaders and burnt down their effigies for having leveled unsubstantiated charges of moral turpitude against the Chief Minister.
Baig, who had fired PDP’s salvo on Omar Abdullah on the floor of the House on Tuesday, became the first target of the ruling party supporters. Even as such demonstrations remained peaceful at most of the places in Valley, reports said that scores of NC’s angry cadres shouted high-pitch slogans against Baig on the highway and resorted to heavy stone pelting on his official residence at civil lines Baramulla. Another mob of the NC activists and supports swarmed to Baig’s private residence at Kralsangri, in Nishat area, shouted slogans and pelted stones. Baig alleged in Assembly that his wife had been attacked and harassed by the NC followers.
Yet another offensive on Baig from the ruling coalition came in the form of a privilege motion against him that was moved by as many as 9 Ministers---Abdul Rahim Rather, Ali Mohammad Sagar, Mian Altaf Ahmed, Ghulam Hassan Mir, Taj Mohiuddin, Ghulam Mohammad Saroori, Raman Bhalla, Nasir Aslam Wani and Mubrak Gul---besides three MLAs, namely T Namgyal, Feroz Hassan Khan and Mohammad Yasin Shah. As exclusively reported in today’s edition of Early Times, NC and Congress had yesterday itself drafted the motion and submitted it to Assembly Secretariat. Speaker today announced that he had admitted the motion against Baig.
NC workers and supporters also staged strong demonstrations against senior PDP leader, Maulvi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari, at several places in Srinagar as well as Shia-dominated district headquarters of Budgam. Followers of Ansari’s arch rival in Shia community, Aga Ruhullah, who happens to be the youngest Minister in Omar Abdullah’s Cabinet, shouted slogans against Mr Ansari and burnt his effigies in Budgam. Reports said that the crowds also set on fire the effigies of Baig and Mehbooba.
Here in Srinagar, hundreds of NC supporters took out a procession from the party headquarters of Nawa-e-Subah in condemnation of Ansari, Baig and Mehbooba and resorted to sloganeering and stone pelting on Ansari’s business premises of Highland Motors and Airtel call center at Sonwar Bagh. Sources said that dozens of workers at the workshop retaliated and captured two of the NC workers. Both were beaten to pulp and held in confinement till Police intervened and got them rescued. Eyewitnesses said that Police swung into action and forced the warring groups to disperse.
Informed sources revealed to Early Times that Government was likely to file chargesheet against the former Minister of Housing & Urban Development, Mr Ansari in the infamous Sidhra Land Development Scandal in the next two days. Crime Branch had concluded its investigation and found Ansari guilty of having received kickbacks and having favoured one of his family firms. Even as one-man commission of inquiry of a former J&K High Court judge, Justice (retired) K K Gupta, had exonerated Ansari, a crime branch inquiry conducted by former Vigilance Commissioner, R V Raju, had prepared the challan and obtained Governor’s sanction to the prosecution against Ansari in June 2008. Sources said that officials were also sifting through records to proceed against Ansari’s business firms in two matters of sales tax evasion.
All of PDP’s MLAs, led by Mehbooba and Baig, complained in the Assembly that the NC mobs had been let loose with connivance of the official machinery to target Baig’s houses and Ansari’s business premises. They alleged that the unruly mobs had caused substantial damage to properties of both the members of the House. Speaker, Akbar Lone took serious cognizance of the complaint and issued strict directions to the Government to place adequate Police protection at their properties and ensure that these were not harmed.
As the PDP MLAs in chorus alleged that Government was setting the stage for Shia-Sunni clashes “in an attempt to divert peoples’ attention from Shopian and other places”, NC’s Shia MLA from Budgam and Minister of Animal Husbandry, Aga Syed Ruhullah, asserted that the opposition party had in fact exposed its “sinister design” of taking refuge behind sectarian clashes. “What has the community got to do with it? This can be, at the worst, a political clash”, he asserted and implored Speaker to stop the PDP MLAs from “sending the wrong message out”.
Amid a heated exchange between the NC and PDP MLAs, Aga Ruhullah thundered that he would not let PDP’s designs (of creating a sectarian clash) succeed as long as he lived. He asserted that there was complete harmony between the majority Sunni and the minority Shia communities and no sectarian clash had ever taken place in the Valley.
Earlier, during hours of pandemonium---that suspended all of the day’s scheduled business---Speaker Lone informed the House that Director CBI had written to the Assembly Secretariat that the name of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was nowhere among the people found involved in Srinagar Sex Scandal. As copies of the communication were tabled and provided to all members, PDP leader, Mehbooba Mufti, tore off the document with her allegation that CBI was working under influence and it had protected those accused in the sex scandal.
Mehbooba led over a dozen of her party’s MLAs in shouting: “CBI cover up nahin chalega” , “Pardadari nahin chalegi” and “We want judicial probe”. She reiterated her demand that the (Srinagar sex scandal) investigation be held by a retired judge of Supreme Court of India or else by CBI under the supervision of J&K High Court. Vociferous MLAs and Ministers from NC and Congress made sustained attempts to silence the PDP brigade with counter-slogans and counter-charges. They claimed that CBI was the country’s most credible investigating agency and the investigation of Srinagar Sex Scandal had been assigned to it on the recommendations of none other than then Deputy Chief Minister Muzaffar Hussain Baig.
During the course of heated exchanges between the PDP and the ruling coalition, NC’s Ministers and MLAs did not allow Mr Baig to speak further after Director of CBI had disowned the list attributed to the agency. Speaker earlier permitted Baig to speak but, in the wake of stiff resistance from NC and PDP, he later admitted the privilege motion and declared Mr Baig barred from making any statement till a decision was taken on the motion. Baig desired to know under what rule Speaker had barred him from using the right of speech in Assembly.
Speaker said that he had admitted the motion against Baig and would declare his verdict after assessing its merits. Baig intermittently shouted that Director CBI was shielding the guilty and he had, according to the PDP leader, submitted a subjective reply to the Speaker’s communication.
Later, at a news conference, Mehbooba and her MLAs complained that CBI had mentioned about those challaned in the matter but suppressed the information regarding “suspects yielding high political clout”.
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