PDP condemns civilian killings

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed has said the present coalition government in Jammu & Kashmir looks pathetically helpless in safeguarding life and dignity of people. “They have proved totally unequal to the task,” he told a meeting of the party workers from Jammu district here today.

Strongly condemning the unabated and brazen killing of innocent citizens, Mufti said the Government is either incompetent to deal with the situation or has deliberately unleashed security forces on the people to recreate the pre-2002 atmosphere of terror and insecurity. He said NC had historically been a beneficiary of unsettled conditions in the State and it seems the party is again creating a fear psychosis ahead of the Lok Sabha polls to reap the benefits of low voter turn-out.

Mufti said the streak of killings in the State have started damaging the atmosphere of reconciliation that the PDP had painstakingly built over the past six years. He said loss of life, the latest being the murder of a carpenter at Khaigam Pulwama, is only the more cruel aspect of human rights violations by the State apparatus and added that the incidents of public humiliation by security forces day in and day out are no less condemnable. “The incident at Karan Nagar in which respectable citizens were beaten up on a flimsy ground cannot be tolerated in any decent society”, he said

Reiterating his demand for immediate scrapping of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and handing over the internal security to state police, Mufti said that alone could ensure dignified life for the citizens of state who have pinned great hopes in democratic process and voted in elections as never before. He said it cannot infuse any confidence among the people to see their chief minister petitioning one central minister after the other and security forces officers “to do the favour of an inquiry in such incidents” and wondered why the state inquiry into Bomai incident was at all ordered to further lower the image of the Government. “What is the role of the chief minister then as head of the Unified Command?” Mufti asked.

The PDP Patron said the power of peoples’ voice should not be underestimated by the State. The government should learn from recent experiences in the State and the region around us and reach out to people through democratic means. “Soldier and his gun should cease to be the only face of great Indian democracy in Kashmir”, he cautioned and stressed the need for empowering civil society institutions in the State.

The PDP patron said Omar Abdullah’s government was defined by incompetence on governance front as well. The government, he said, was trying to run itself without any program, which is not possible. He said while the government had reneged on all its pre poll promises, it wanted to escape future accountability by refusing to frame or divulge its coalition agenda. Apparently, power seems to be the only ideology they follow, he said.