JAMMU: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader Mehbooba Mufti on Monday, November 12 wrote to J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah urging him to form a committee to review the cases of government employees who were summarily dismissed from their services. During the past few years, many employees have been dismissed for their links with separatists and secessionists under Article 311 of the Constitution.
This article empowers the government to dismiss such employees without giving details of the reasons for the action. Anees ul Islam, grandson of late separatist leader SAS Geelani, who was appointed to a senior government post through backdoor during Mehbooba’s tenure as CM, was one of such persons dismissed under Article 311. According to most reports, Mehbooba’s aide and now a party MLA, Waheed Para, had facilitated this appointment.
Two sons of banned terrorist organisation Hizbul Mujahideen (HM)’s chief Syed Salahuddin were among the employees dismissed under Article 311 in November 2021. Syed Ahmed Shakeel and Shahid Yusuf were among a bunch of 11 J&K government employees whose services were terminated for “anti-national activities”.
Another well-known case of such dismissals is that of Assabah-ul-Arjamand Khan, a Kashmir Administrative Service (KAS) officer, wife of terrorist Farooq Ahmad Dar (alias Bitta Karate) who is behind bars. Bitta Karate became a household name in Kashmir, and all over India, after he admitted on record in an interview to Manoj Raghuvanshi of having killed many Kashmiri Pandits (KPs). (See interview here https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=513918313636550)
Mehbooba said he hoped that CM Omar will take a humanitarian view to alleviate the sufferings of these families. She also said that dozens of employees have been dismissed since 2019 after scrapping of Article 370 for allegedly taking part in anti-national activities in this manner.
Such cases of summary dismissals should be reviewed and scrutinised by the proposed committee, she said. Not only review, the committee should also provide financial assistance of the families of the dismissed employees, Mufti wrote in her letter. To give it wide publicity, she has also posted it on her X account.
Going a step further, she has also suggested that “clear guidelines’’ should be developed to prevent similar injustices in future. She has claimed that these government employees were dismissed arbitrarily, on flimsy grounds, without a thorough investigation and fair trial. Her claims, however, do not bear scrutiny as these dismissals are based on inputs from intelligence agencies, including the CID wing of the Jammu Kashmir Police (JKP).
Most adverse reports regarding such employees were corroborated by inputs from the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Military Intelligence (MI) and other intelligence agencies also. It is only then that a dismissal under Article 311 is initiated, some officials who requested anonymity pointed out.
As the CM of Union Territory (UT), Omar has limited powers and exercises no control over the General Administration Department (GAD) and the police. It needs to be pointed out here that the GAD and police are two departments directly involved in the summary dismissals. Incidentally, he has no administrative control over the IAS and IPS cadres either which are answerable through GAD to Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha.
Given these ground realities, what may be Mehbooba’s motive in writing to Omar for setting up a committee to review the cases of employees dismissed under Article 311? It appears she is indulging in political point-scoring after the decimation of her party in the recent assembly elections. Her party, the PDP, completed 25 years of its formal existence in July this year. In the assembly elections, her party plummeted from a high of 28 in 2014 to only three MLAs last month.
Mehbooba appears to be groping in thin air trying to buck up the morale of her party cadres for the coming elections to the panchayats and urban local bodies which are likely in the near future. She is trying to send them a message that by raising such irrelevant emotional issues, her nuisance value in Kashmir’s politics can only go up.
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