Mehbooba Mufti faces tough political future as Kashmir boils

Srinagar: The situation on the ground in Kashmir seems to have gone terribly wrong for Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it has spun out of the Chief Minister’s control.

South Kashmir particularly Anantnag has been a political bastion of her Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and it was where it won most of its seats in the November-December 2014 J&K Assembly elections. Earlier elected to Lok Sabha from her home constituency Anantnag, she also won the recently held by-poll on a seat from the region her father and PDP patron Mufti Muhammad Sayeed had left vacant following his death in January this year.

On the weekend, almost the entire south Kashmir was on the boil following the killing of Burhan Muzaffar Wani, the new-age poster boy of militancy in the restive Jammu and Kashmir. He was along with two close associates killed by security forces in a gun battle in Anantnag’s Kokernag area on Friday, sparking off widespread protests and violence in the Valley.

Anantnag and neighbouring districts of Kulgam, Pulwama and Shopian have particularly been on the edge and the protests and clashes have spread to other areas, forcing the authorities to clamp a curfew in the  entire Valley which has a population of over five million.

Read: Amid Kashmir clashes, Omar Abdullah assures Mehbooba Mufti of support

In anticipation of a flare up, the Chief Minister had reportedly asked the top security forces’ officers to ensure restraint is exercised by their men on the ground while dealing with the situation. But the death toll in security forces’ firings and other actions is going up with each hour and latest figure stands at 30 - all but one of these have been reported from south Kashmir. Scores of people are being treated in hospitals and most of them have received above-waist bullet or pellet injuries. Also, at least one policeman has been killed and over 100 injured in mob violence.

In Tral, the home town of Wani deep inside Pulwama tens of thousands of mourners turned up at his funeral.

The carnage has pushed Mehbooba into the most difficult situation of her political career. She would find it hard to justify the killings much less when, as an opposition leader, she would use every death at the hands of security forces for slamming her political bête noire and then Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. 

On Saturday, it was Abdullah’s turn to pay her back in the same coin. He criticised the handling of the situation post the Wani killing and also cautioned, “Mark my words - Burhan's ability to recruit in to militancy from the grave will far outstrip anything he could have done on social media”. Many saw in the assertion a plea that instead of being killed Wani should have been captured alive. People within and outside J&K turned to social networking sites to endorse the view or express similar opinion following the spurt in violence in the Valley following iconic militant commander’s killing.

In another tweet, Mr. Abdullah said, “After many years I hear slogans for "Azadi" resonate from the mosque in my uptown Srinagar locality. Kashmir's disaffected got a new icon yesterday’.

Paradoxically, though being Chief Minister and also holding the home portfolio in the PDP-BJP government in the State Mufti chose to publicly express “deep grief and agony” over the death of youth in the security forces’ actions across the Valley on Saturday. “I express profound grief over the tragic death of the youths and extend my heart-felt condolences to the bereaved family members in their hour of immense grief,” she said in a statement here. That at a time when two senior most officers of the J&K police ADGP (CID) S.M. Sahai and IG (Kashmir) Syed Javed Mujtaba Gillani were at a hurriedly called press conference trying to justify security forces’ firings and other actions on the plea that it was a “difficult and critical” day for them and that they actually only retaliated to a series of mob attacks on the police stations, garrisons, homes of politicians and the key infrastructure.

But the Chief Minister indirectly accused the security force of using ‘disproportionate’ force against the protesters. She said ‘disproportionate use of force for crowd control results in loss of precious lives and grave injuries which should be avoided at all costs’. She asked the police and the paramilitary forces to use Standard Operational Procedure (SOP) while dealing with protesters to avoid loss of precious human lives or injuries.

Urging for calm, Mufti sought people’s cooperation in restoration of normalcy in the Valley. “Violence only brings miseries to the people and tragedies for the victim families,” she said and appealed people, especially the youth not to fall prey to the machinations of the vested interests, who, she alleged, play politics over the dead bodies of Kashmiris. She also prayed for early recovery of the injured including civilians and the police personnel and asked the health authorities to provide best possible treatment to them.

The PDP-BJP government headed by her on Sunday also made a passionate appeal to Hurriyat Conference and other separatists and mainstream opposition parties to supplement its efforts aimed at bringing about peace and restoring normalcy in the State.

Mr. Abdullah while responding to the plea tweeted, “The @JKNC_ will never be an irresponsible party & opposing you will never mean setting the state on fire for narrow political ends.” He, however, asked the incumbent Mufti to lead from the front. He wrote on micro-blogging site Twitter.com “Please don't take the easy option of hiding behind your spokesperson & your police officers. No one elected them, the people elected you...This is the time to lead from the front. You must accept the responsibility both for letting things get to this point as for the recovery”.

On Monday after receiving a phone call from Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, during which a similar appeal was made to the opposition leader, he wrote on Twitter that “HM @rajnathsingh ji spoke to me earlier today. I told him that until security forces exercise maximum restraint & stop killing protestors... this vicious cycle of violence would not stop. Only after the lethal use of force ends can we begin to pull the valley back from the abyss...” He, however, assured, “For our part @JKNC_ will play whatever role is required to help normalise the situation. But onus lies on state & central governments”.

The PDP’s joining hands with the BJP was seen by many a move against the popular political sentiment in Kashmir and the gamble which may not pay off eventually. The mayhem being witnessed across the Valley has only made it more difficult for Mehbooba Mufti.