Centre Wants To Keep Kashmir Pot Boiling To Garner Votes: Mufti

Source: PTI

PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti on Friday said the Centre wants to keep the pot boiling in Jammu and Kashmir to garner more votes in elections.

Her remarks come in the wake of the dismissal of three employees by the Jammu and Kashmir government for their alleged involvement in anti-national activities and the attaching of properties of militants.

“In the name of fighting militancy, govt employees are dismissed arbitrarily & houses attached without giving the families any chance to avail the due legal course. This is collective punishment for innocent families & upends their lives,” Mufti wrote on Twitter.

The former chief minister said the “muscular iron fisted policy” may appeal to the BJP vote bank in the country, but in Jammu and Kashmir, “it is not only wreaking lives but further alienating people here from rest of the country”.

“GOI wants to keep the Kashmir pot boiling to use it in elections to garner votes,” she added.

In its ongoing action against terrorists operating from Pakistan, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday attached a property of The Resistance Front (TRF) operative Basit Ahmad Reshi in Baramulla district.

The action follows the sealing of a Srinagar-based property of the founder and self-styled chief commander of the Al-Umar Mujahideen, Mushtaq Zargar alias ‘Latram’, on Thursday.

Reshi, a “listed terrorist” under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), has been operating from Pakistan after his exfiltration there. He has been found funding terror activities and acts in the Kashmir Valley, an NIA spokesperson had said.

Meanwhile, three government employees, including a schoolteacher recently arrested for allegedly carrying out several blasts, were dismissed from service for their alleged involvement in anti-national activities, an official said.

The Jammu and Kashmir administration ordered the dismissal of government middle school teacher Arif Sheikh of Reasi, Junior Engineer (Public Works department) Manzoor Ahmad Itoo of Bandipora and Syed Saleem Andrabi of Kupwara, an orderly in the Social Welfare department, under Article 311 of the Constitution, a government spokesperson said.

Article 311 of the Constitution provides for the dismissal of a person employed in civil capacities under the Union or a State.

In related news, on February 27, Mufti said Kashmiri Muslims are ashamed over the killing of a Kashmiri Pandit and hit out at the government for claiming that normalcy has been restored in Jammu and Kashmir.

Sanjay Sharma (40), who worked as an ATM guard, was shot in the chest at point-blank range by terrorists barely 100 metres from his residence in the Achan area of Pulwama district at around 11 am on February 26. He was rushed to a hospital by passersby but succumbed to the injuries.

“The government claims to have ended militancy. If that were the case, who killed him (Sharma)? What is the government doing?” Mufti asked while talking to reporters after visiting Sharma’s residence in Pulwama.

Earlier, on February, 18, Mufti had said the people of Jammu and Kashmir have now come to realise how Article 370 of the Constitution acted as a protective shield for them, after the BJP-led government used bulldozers to demolish houses and businesses of the poor.

She also defended her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s decision to join hands with the BJP to form the government in Jammu and Kashmir after the 2014 assembly polls, saying the PDP patriarch had successfully “caged the beast”.

“When Article 370 was abrogated, some people thought it would only affect the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the National Conference (NC). When the bulldozers came to demolish our homes, businesses and even the shelters for our domestic animals, people realised how Article 370 was a protection for us,” Mufti said at a function of her party in Srinagar.