Jammu: PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday made veiled statements equating the BJP’s rule with that of former Pakistani military dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and accused the saffron party of “poisoning” people’s minds.
She appealed to the people, especially the youth of both Jammu and Kashmir divisions, to come together and fight for the “lost honour”.
The former chief minister was referring to working towards the restoration of Article 370 of the Constitution that provided special status to Jammu and Kashmir. It was abrogated by the Centre in August 2019.
“What is happening in our country is for everyone to see. Our democracy and Constitution are being destroyed… What is the difference between general Zia-ul-Haq’s rule and today’s India? They are poisoning our country like the Pakistani ruler did there,” Mufti said without naming the BJP.
Addressing a public rally here, she referred to the recent lynching of a Sri Lankan national in Pakistan and said while the Pakistani prime minister was quick to criticize it, those involved in such gruesome incidents in India were being garlanded.
Mufti said while there was animosity against Pakistani founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah for dividing India and the Muslims, “Today, there are hundreds of Jinnahs polarizing Indians. They belong to the party that did not play any role in the freedom struggle.
“Today, they claim to be nationalists and dub their opponents as traitors and anti-nationals. None of them went to jail during the freedom struggle. They were not even hoisting the national flag on their headquarters until a few years ago,” she said.
However, the former chief minister said this is a place of ‘Ganga–Jamuni Tehzeeb’ (Ganges–Yamuna culture) and the politics of “Godse” (the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi) will not work.
Slamming the BJP for allegedly using the Army to disperse employees of the Jammu and Kashmir Power Development Department, who went on a strike against privatization last week, Mufti said, “They will repeat the practice outside Jammu and Kashmir, too, as they want to get things done by training guns on the army men’s shoulders.
She hailed former prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee for victories in the 1971 and 1999 wars even as she sought to know what the incumbent regime had done even as “China had taken a large chunk of land in Ladakh and built colonies in Arunachal.”
Describing the Sangh’s slogan ‘Ek Desh, Ek Vidhan, Ek Pradhan, Ek Nishan’ as the root cause of the Kashmir issue, she said it created discord among the people of Jammu and Kashmir who rejected the two-nation theory.
