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| Mainstream parties in fulltime blame game as Kashmir simmer with anger | | |
Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 5: For four consecutive days normal life remained paralysed when groups of people took to the streets in various parts of the Kashmir valley, especially in the city of Srinagar, protesting against the killing of a youth Wamiq Farooq Wani who was hit by a police teargas shell in his head. Groups of youth fought pitched battle with the police in which, in all, more than 150 civilians and 60 policemen were injured. The level of public anger could be gauged when several thousand people, shouting anti-India, pro-Islam and pro-Azadi slogans, participated in the funeral of the 15-year old student.
Besides the separatists the mainstream political parties too voiced their resentment and concern over the death of the boy in police teargassing. Even the PCC Chief, Saif-ud-Din Soz, had no other alternative but to demand high level probe into the killing of the youth.He had to do it when he saw the tide turning against the National Conference led Government in the State. Well the youth's death gave an ample scope to the PDP to hammer against the ruling National Conference leadership. The Party Chief, Ms Mehbooba Mufti, has blamed the Government led by the National Conference for having created a situation which was similar to the one that was witnessed during the Assembly poll in 1987.
She said that whatever progress the erstwhile PDP led Government had achieved as far as restoration of peace was concerned the one-year old National Conference regime had undone all that "we had gained betwen 2002 and 2005." Separatists besides some mainstream political leaders, including Hakeem Mohammad Yasin and CPIM leader, MY Tarigami, have started blaming the National Conference for having created a situation in which human rights violations by the police had been on the increase during the last one year of Omar Abdullah's regime.
The ruling National Conference leaders, after basing their information on intelligence agency reports, blamed the PDP and Jamait-e-Islami for inciting people to take to the streets. Even one police officer,who has been supervising police bandobast against the protesters, said that the Government has reports that the PDP and the Jamaat leaders were engineering these violent protest demonstrations in order to derail peace process.He said that during the last one year of Omar's regime the level of militancy related violence had dropped by 30 per cent adding that a new chapter in the development activities had been introduced which had given sleepless nights to the PDP.Since the PDP was power hungry it wanted to make it hot for the NC led Government so that an opportunity could come to the Muftis to regain power.
However,PDP leaders wanted the NC leadership to read the recent statement of the special DGPCRPF,N.K.Tripathi,in which he said that Pakistani agencies were funding stone throwing incidents in the Kashmir valley.He had stated that after having failed to win the proxy war these Pakistani agencies were funding and inciting youth to take to the streets so that whatever gains the Government had achieved in improving the security scenario were totally reversed.In this connection he said that during the last one and a half year more than 1500 CRPF jawans were injured in these stone throwing incidents and 343 CRPF vehicles had been hit. One police officer said that when protesters threaten to maul "our jawans" it should be the duty of the police to quell violence at any cost."If we do not take corrective steps the situation can engulf the entire Kashmir in violence,"he said.
In fact whenever people stage protest demonstrations mainstream political leaders quickly resort to blame game exercise because they believe that by holding the other responsible for the trouble they could settle their scores with their rivals.In fact what is surprising is the way people have reacted to the killing of the 15-year old youth in teargassing when in earlier incidents no such public out cry was visible.This is intriguing because Wamiq Farooq did not belong to any influential family.He was the child hailing from a very poor family of Rainawari.Police sources said that the way groups of youth fought pitched battle with the police indicated that some political forces were behind these agitations and it was all aimed at derailing the peace process.It is in this connection Chief Minister,Omar Abdullah,blamed the "vested interests" for distrubing peace in the valley.However,Mehbooba again reacted saying that she wanted to know which were the vested interests.She said that since the Omar led Government had failed on all fronts the Chief Minister was holding "unidentified vested interests" responsible for the turmoil.
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