After Omar, Mehbooba Mufti targets Engineer Rashid’s party: ‘Proxy of BJP’

“It took 50 years for Mufti (Mohammad Sayeed) sahib to found a party and we still don’t have the resources that we can field candidates everywhere. I want to know, the person (Engineer Rashid) who is in jail fights a parliamentary election – that is good. But who is behind their party that their candidates stand up everywhere?” the PDP chief said on Monday.

In the recent Lok Sabha polls, Rashid had defeated Omar from Baramulla.

Barring the PDP, NC and Congress, all other political parties and Independent candidates are the proxies of the BJP, Mufti added. “Their aim is to divide the vote in Kashmir, the PDP especially is their target. They know the PDP is the only party that stood up for the people of Kashmir, stood up for the (political) prisoners, raised its voice against what they did on August 5, 2019… All these parties which have come forward in the shape of Independent candidates, the AIP… they get proper funding and protection from the government,” she said.

“I want to ask the government if they want to bring Engineer Rashid sahib’s party to the front. All your other proxy parties have failed and now you support him fully with money and other means. Tell us straight away that no other political party has to contest elections,” Mufti said.

Earlier, Omar said that the BJP had “struck a deal” with some parties and Independents for help to form the government in the Union territory, and said “they want to target only one person — the National Conference candidate from Ganderbal”, hinting at himself.

Mufti also mentioned the “assault” on its Shopian candidate Yawar Shafi Banday by alleged AIP workers, in Balpora village on Sunday evening, and asked why the accused had not been arrested. Balpora is the native village of AIP Shopian candidate Raja Waheed, who switched sides from the PDP after he was denied a ticket.

Police have called the incident a “scuffle” between workers of the two parties and registered a case of violation of the Model Code of Conduct against both.

Claiming the attack had left Banday with several broken ribs and struggling for his life, Mufti said the police failure to act revealed its and the government’s “partisan” role.

Countering the claims of the NC and PDP, AIP spokesperson Firdous Ahmad Baba said theirs was the only party with no direct or indirect affiliation with the BJP. “After the parliamentary elections, they (the NC and PDP) branded us as Islamic radical elements and now they are labelling us a BJP team,” he said. “Let them first be clear whether we are Islamic radicals or pro-BJP.”

Baba added that the NC and PDP had no moral right to pass judgment on anyone’s links with the BJP, as both had partnered the party in the past.

“Mehbooba Mufti can’t befool today’s youth as she is the woman who got the BJP here, she is the woman who compromised state autonomy by bringing the GST here. That was the last nail in the coffin,” Baba told The Indian Express.