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Journalism of Courage
PDP leader Muzaffar Hussain Beigh,who created a political storm by alleging involvement of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in the 2006 sex scandal,rejected the charge that his party was serving the separatists’ agenda.
“We are in fact preventing the separatists from occupying the political space. If we don¿t raise these issues as an effective opposition,they will…we are using the institution of democracy,” said Beigh on being asked about the charge that the Peoples’s Democratic Party was playing to the tune of separatist leaders.
Beigh,a lawyer by profession and Deputy Chief Minister during the PDP-Congress combination,chose to evade direct replies on the timing of levelling the allegation.
Following Beigh’s allegationon Tuesday,Omar tendered his resignation to Governor N N Vohra who rejected it today saying there was no basis to the charge levelled against him.
Beigh said,”We are not using the streets and weapons like Hurriyat conference would like to do. We are doing it for a national cause. We believe that there should be no cover up.”
A privilege motion moved against Beigh has been admitted in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly.
Asked why the PDP had chosen to remain silent when the High Court had passed its order in October,2007 relating to the case when his party was in power,Beigh said,”What can we do,we are not in power (now). It is a public interest litigation which is being handled by the bar association.”
“As soon as we got the documents,we raised it before the legislative assembly. That is the only institution where it can be raised,” he said.
He was asked whether this was serving the purpose of the people as the assembly had met for passing the budget. “Well,the government could have easily said that they will cooperate with the investigating agency. And they should not have staged this drama of resignation or no resignation. …We only brought it to the attention of the House. That was our duty to do as public representative. The rest is drama,yesterday,they did not permit me to speak and the whole day was wasted on that,” he said.
Asked about the legal sanctity of the list that he had circulated in the assembly on Tuesday,he claimed that the list was “prepared with the information of the CBI and handed over to the High court”,a charge denied by the CBI.
