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| Withdrawal of DAA & AFSPA | | Befooling and hoodwinking people of Kashmir | |
MINCING NO WORDS
NEHA
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Feb 24: Are the people of Kashmir province fool? No. They are not. Or, are they so innocent that they can’t understand what their leaders, including the Chief Minister, say again and again? Certainly not. Or, can anyone take the people of Kashmir for a ride and befool and hoodwink them? It’s a question that needs a definite answer. Or, is the memory of the people of Kashmir is so short that forget unequivocal statements of their leaders in no time? Again, it’s a question that needs a definite answer.
Why these questions? Why because certain developments have taken place between February 20, when the Central Working Committee of the National Conference met in Jammu to take stock of the situation and give a concrete shape to the path it would tread in the coming days, and February 23, when the Chief Minister met the Union Home Minister in New Delhi.
What happened on February 20, just four days ago, and what happened four days later? It needs to be referred to here to lay bare the disparities and contradiction of sorts between what the Chief Minister and his father said on February 20 in Jammu and what the Chief Minister did in New Delhi. It was a complete U-turn in one sense.
On February 20, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah asserted that the “power of veto vis-à-vis revocation of Disturbed Area Act (DAA)/Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA) is with the state government only and not with anybody else” (obviously he referred to New Delhi). Both father-son duo averred that the decision to revoke DAA lies ultimately with the state government. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Union Minister for Renewable Energy and party president Farooq Abdullah had said so while replying to the queries pertaining to the Defence Minister A K Antony’s recent statement dismissing demands for withdrawal of AFSPA. The PDP president had expressed her unhappiness over the stand taken by the Defence Minister and had asserted that the AFSPA would have to go lock, stock and barrel.
It bears recalling that the Chief Minister had on February 20 also stated that “Antony is also the member of CCS (Cabinet Committee on Security) that made the recommendations on the basis of which two committees have been set up by Unified Command to examine DAA. So I don’t think there is any scope for someone suggesting that there are any differences. The government of J&K has been very keen to start the process of rolling back those laws that are not required in the places where the militancy is much less as compared to the past. Fortunately, the Government of India is also thinking on the same lines and we’ve the full support of Prime Minister, AICC president Sonia Gandhi, Union Home Minister and Defence Minister.”
On February 23, the Chief Minister met the Union Home Minister and urged him to delete “peaceful areas of the state from the list of the DAA.” In other words, he abdicated the state’s “veto power” in favour of the Centre and requested the Home Minister to allow him to review the application of the DAA, which is being denounced in Kashmir by the Kashmiri leaders of all hues as a “draconian” law. It needs to be noted that if certain areas are deleted from the list of the DAA, then the AFSPA automatically ceases to exist there.
Was it not a complete U-turn? Was it not double-speak? It was both a complete U-turn and double-speak. The very fact that the Chief Minister, who has the power to revoke the DAA, took the matter with the Union Home Minister clearly suggests that he has never been committed to what he has been saying ever since his elevation to the Chief Minister’s position. Things are crystal clear. Now it is for the people of Kashmir and other Kashmiri leaders to take or not to take cognizance of the U-turn and double-speak. But one thing can be said: The NC leadership wants to remain in power and, at the same time, wants to create serious problems by raking up controversial issues, which create animosity between the regions and which widens further the already rather wide gulf between Kashmir and New Delhi. The real problem in Kashmir lies in the kind of politics the Kashmiri leadership plays and there should be no doubt it. The people want peace and good governance, but the NC wants to take recourse to rabble-rousing in order to divert the people’s attention away from the real issue. As for the Union Government, it not only watches deterioration of things in the state as a mute spectator but also contributes to the mess, thus creating conducive atmosphere for subversive activities. The concerned people call it a “vicious” approach to the issues of national import.
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