In PDP bastion, Mehbooba Mufti faces trouble

The situation in J&K seems to have gone totally out of control for Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti.

South Kashmir, particularly Anantnag, has been a political bastion of her Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and it was from here that it won most of its seats in the 2014 J&K Assembly elections.

Earlier elected to Lok Sabha from her home constituency Anantnag, Ms Mufti also won the recently held by-poll from a seat from the region that had fallen vacant after the death of her father and PDP patron, Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, in January this year.

Over the weekend, almost entire south Kashmir was on the boil following the killing of Burhan Muzaffar Wani, the new-age poster boy of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir. He, along with two close associates, was killed by security forces in a gun battle in Anantnag’s Kokernag area on Friday, sparking off widespread protests and violence in the Valley.

Particularly Anantnag and neighbouring districts of Kulgam, Pulwama and Shopian have been on the edge and the protests and clashes have spread to other areas, forcing the authorities to clamp curfew in the entire Valley which has a population of over five million.

In anticipation of a flare up, the Chief Minister had reportedly asked the top officers of the security forces to ensure restraint on the ground while dealing with the situation. But the death toll in security forces firings and other actions is going up with each passion hour with the latest figure being 30 – all but one of these being reported from south Kashmir.

Scores of others are being treated in hospitals and most of them have received above-waist bullet or pellet injuries.

Also, at least one policeman has been killed and over 100 injured in mob violence. In Tral, the hometown of Wani deep inside Pulwama, tens of thousands of mourners turned up at his funeral.

The upheaval has pushed Ms Mufti into the most difficult situation of her political career and she will find the killings hard to justify much less when, as an opposition leader, she would use every single death in security forces’ actions, even that of a militant commander, to slam her political bête noire and then Chief Minister, Mr Omar Abdullah.

On Saturday, it was Mr Abdullah’s turn to pay her back in the same coin. He criticised the handling of the situation and also cautioned: “Mark my words - Burhan’s ability to recruit into militancy from the grave will far outstrip anything he could have done on social media.” Many saw in the assertion a plea that instead of being killed, Wani should have been captured alive.

People within and outside J&K turned to social networking sites to endorse the view or express similar opinions following the spurt in violence in the Valley. In another tweet, Mr Abdullah stated: “After many years I hear slogans for ‘Azadi’ resonate from the mosque in my uptown Srinagar locality. Kashmir’s disaffected got a new icon yesterday.”

Paradoxically, though being Chief Minister and also holding the Home portfolio in the PDP-BJP government in the state, Ms Mufti chose to publicly express “deep grief and agony” over the death of youth in the security forces’ actions across the Valley on Saturday. “I express profound grief over the tragic death of the youths and extend my heart-felt condolences to the bereaved family members in their hour of immense grief,” she said in a statement here.

This at a time when two senior-most officers of the J&K police, ADGP (CID) S.M. Sahai and IG (Kashmir) Syed Javed Mujtaba Gillani were at a hurriedly called press conference trying to justify the security forces’ firings and other actions on the plea that it was a “difficult and critical” day for them and that they only retaliated to a series of mob attacks on police stations, garrisons, homes of politicians and key infrastructure facilities.

The Chief Minister, however, indirectly accused the security forces of using “disproportionate” force against the protesters. She said “disproportionate use of force for crowd control results in loss of precious lives and grave injuries which should be avoided at all costs.” She asked the police and the paramilitary forces to use Standard Operational Procedure (SOP) while dealing with protesters to avoid loss of human lives or injuries.

Urging for calm, Ms Mufti sought people’s cooperation in restoration of normalcy in the Valley. “Violence only brings miseries to the people and tragedies for the victim families,” she said and appealed to people, especially the youth, not to fall prey to the machinations of vested interests, who, she alleged, played politics over the dead bodies of Kashmiris.

She also prayed for the early recovery of the injured including civilians and police personnel and asked health authorities to provide best possible treatment to them.

The PDP-BJP government headed by her on Sunday also made a passionate appeal to the Hurriyat Conference and other separatist and mainstream opposition parties to supplement its efforts aimed at bringing about peace and restoring normalcy in the state.

Mr Abdullah, while responding to the plea, Tweeted: “The @JKNC_ will never be an irresponsible party & opposing you will never mean setting the state on fire for narrow political ends.” He, however, asked Ms Mufti to lead from the front. He Tweeted: “Please don’t take the easy option of hiding behind your spokesperson & your police officers. No one elected them, the people elected you...This is the time to lead from the front. You must accept the responsibility both for letting things get to this point as for the recovery.”

On Monday, after receiving a phone call from Union home minister Rajnath Singh, Mr Abdullah Tweeted: “HM @rajnathsingh ji spoke to me earlier today. I told him that until security forces exercise maximum restraint & stop killing protestors... this vicious cycle of violence would not stop. Only after the lethal use of force ends can we begin to pull the valley back from the abyss...” He, however, assured, “For our part @JKNC_ will play whatever role is required to help normalise the situation. But onus lies on state & central governments”.

The PDP’s joining hands with the BJP was seen by many a move against the popular political sentiment in Kashmir and a gamble which may not pay off eventually. The mayhem being witnessed across the Valley has only made the sailing for Ms Mufti more difficult, say local watchers.