J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s suggestion to the Armed Forces to have interactive sessions with people is grossly misleading and politically incorrect
Daya Sagar
Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, while addressing a unified command meeting in Srinagar on April 25, suggested that the Security Agencies should act as ‘councellors’ to the local community/youth in the Kashmir Valley through regular interface and hold counselling sessions for the youth to help allay their apprehensions and misgivings about the system as they were ‘unfortunately’ caught in a web/net of misinformation and violence.
“Since they are ‘our own’ they have to be won over with a healing touch avoiding any collateral damage while dealing with law and order situations and that the parents of the youths (‘protesting and pelting stones on security forces) should be taken into confidence”. The said meeting was held after Mufti”s return from Delhi where she discussed the Kashmir situation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
The spirit of the message reflects the extreme seriousness of the situation in Kashmir valley that has nearly gone out of the control of the ‘democratically’- elected present government. The
security forces/army can surely provide a physically secure environment to the people to work but the socio-political secure environment has to be provided by the local mainstream leadership and the civilian government.
Mehbooba Mufti, by asking the security forces for counselling of the youth and not making her own party cadre address the problem ,seems to be shirking her duty.
Why has not she asked MLAs/MLCs of PD and the BJP to stay amongst people in the interiors of Kashmir valley and organise counselling sessions for youths to help remove adverse apprehensions and misgivings.
Does she feel that the ‘mainstream’ leadership has lost the faith of the Kashmir valley?
Not only that, Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP had won 11 out of 16 MLA seats falling in the Anantnag Parliamentary constituency in 2014 elections. Omar Abdullah has said recently that when
NC-Congress government was in power, Mehbooba Mufti used to frequently visit families of the locals killed in encounters with security forces.
So, now too she need to introspect why her party leadership advocated for deferring April 12 Parliamentary elections to the same Anantnag Parliamentary constituency.
It is neither fair nor wise to expect from Army and the security forces to solve a ‘political problem’ in a democracy since the security forces can help the civil administration for controlling the violent unlawful protests/activities but they cannot do the socio-political rebuilding that the public representatives are expected to do in a democratic set up. Looking at the situations that Kashmir Valley is in after nearly 70 years (in April 2017) of the independence (Oct 1947), any approach that rests principally on simple law &order considerations or solutions resting primarily in infrastructure development & employment generation would be deceiving one’s own self.
(The writer is a sr journalist and a social activist)
