KL Report
SRINAGAR
Amidst row over the release of Kashmiri separatist leader Masarat Alam Bhat from jail after more than four years, the ruling BJP has reportedly warned its Jammu and Kashmir ally Mufti Mohammad Sayeed: “Mend your ways or we will end the alliance.”
Reports said that BJP president Amit Shah Tuesday evening summoned state party leader Nirmal Singh, and asked him to deliver a stern message to Mufti and his PDP.
The BJP President reportedly said that it would not sacrifice its ideology for the sake of power. “Next time, there will be consequences,” Nirmal Singh was reportedly asked to tell the PDP.
The days-old alliance between ideological opposites PDP and the BJP has been pushed to the edge by a series of controversies since the coalition government came to power on March 1.
The row over separatist Masarat Alam’s release from jail on Saturday has left the Centre facing opposition attacks for the third time in two weeks. On Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that his Jammu and Kashmir ally had freed the hardliner without consulting the Centre. “I share the opposition’s aakrosh (anger),” he had said in the Lok Sabha.
But as reported by NDTV the decision to free Masarat was taken when Jammu and Kashmir was under central rule.
According NDTV a letter written on February 4, the state home department had flagged that a detention order against Masarat Alam had lapsed and he could not be kept in jail without any charges. No fresh charges were brought and a letter on March 4 said that Alam’s preventive detention had “not been approved by the government” and he should be released.
There is in the public domain a letter that the release was ordered on February 2 when there was governor’s rule here, so the union home minister should know about it,” said PDP’s Haseeb Drabu, the Jammu and Kashmir Finance Minister.
