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Journalism of Courage
The BJP is trying to create “small Bhindranwales” in Jammu and Kashmir, says Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti.
Speaking to The Indian Express at her party office in Srinagar, Mufti equates this to “what the Congress did in the early Eighties in Punjab”. It built up Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale to politically outsmart the Akalis, but he turned out to be a tiger it mounted but could not dismount. “That’s what the BJP is trying to do,” she says.
Mufti’s reference is to Engineer Rashid, the Awami Ittehad Party chief who won the recent Lok Sabha polls from Baramulla as an Independent, defeating National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah and People’s Conference chief Sajad Lone from behind bars. Before the Assembly polls, Rashid got bail to campaign for his party candidates, a coincidence that Valley parties have questioned.
Mufti says that during Rashid’s campaign for the Lok Sabha elections, there were slogans of aazadi (freedom) at his campaign meetings while he had demanded plebiscite in J&K in the past.
However, the former CM who is seen to have burnt her hands due to the PDP’s decision to align with the BJP after the 2014 elections, is confident that the ongoing polls will see a clear victory of anti-BJP parties. “It will be a secular government in Srinagar, not a BJP government,” the PDP chief says.
So will the PDP support the NC-Congress combine if they fell short of the required numbers to form the government? “We can think of it, if they need our support… But we will have certain conditions. We will do it to further our agenda,” says Mufti, who was left out of the NC-Congress alliance despite being an INDIA member like them.
Listing her party’s goals as “the release of prisoners, checking rampant unemployment, and the restoration of the durbar move to Jammu”, she added that her party would consider supporting a “secular formation”, “rather than leave the field open for separatists”.
