KL Report
SRINAGAR
Peoples Democratic party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti Saturday said the only objective of the NC is to “grab power” and would not hesitate to enter into an alliance even with the BJP once again.
She was addressing a workers’ convention at Pulwama today, she said the lust for power has deprived the NC of any ideological identity. “It would align itself even with the devil not to speak of the BJP with which it had been an alliance partner for six long years,” she said adding, “at the state-level the BJP has already been turned into a cosmetic opposition.”
Recalling the unprincipled and unethinical political partnerships of the NC, Mehbooba said it entered into an alliance with the BJP even when it had a two-third majority in the assembly and had five MP’s in the Lok Sabha. “They did not stop just at entering into a power sharing arrangement but even sold out the most precious resources of power projects when Dr Farooq Abdullah signed an open-ended deal with the late Kumara Mangalam, the NDA minister,” said Mehbooba.
She added that in a display of unholy haste the NC government did not even draft a proper agreement with the central government, which could have ensured at least some returns for our water. “The only concern for Dr Farooq Abdullah at that time was to ensure that his son Omar Abdullah gets a junior minister’s job in the NDA government. They did not review the alliance even after thousands of Muslims were killed in the infamous Gujarat riots and their lives and properties destroyed,” said Mehbooba.
Mehbooba said none of the so-called stalwarts of the NC made even a murmer against Dr Farooq Abdullah’s decision to align with a party whose basic agenda revolves around the abrogation of Article 370, while this party does not tire of repeating its so-called mission to review state’s autonomy.
“They expelled prof Saifudin Soz after he voted against the Vajpayee government in 1998 to bring it down. The only sin of prof Soz was to rise up to Farooq Abdullah’s unprincipled alliance in which all the other leaders stood by him and showed to the world that their only concern was to somehow stick to power, enjoy its luxuries and loot the resources of the people of Jammu & Kashmir,” she said.
Mehbooba said while the graph of NC’s popularity continued to come down, its strategy centered more and more on living by the crutches of any party that was ready to hold its hand. “The NC is in a habit of continuously changing its partners. It became a part of the third front government at the centre under Devi Gowda and I K Gujral. The NC’s current alliance with the Congress is also focused on retaining power by hook or by crook. This is perhaps the only coalition that doesn’t have a common minimum programme,” she said.
The PDP president said that the PDP in 2002 in spite of having just sixteen members entered into an alliance with the Congress and insisted to have a Common Minimum Programme before it could assume office. “The party bargained so much in the interests of the state that prior to the government formation the governor’s rule was necessitated for a few weeks,” she added.
She said the main focus of the Common Minimum Programme was resolution of the Kashmir issue, scrapping of laws like POTA, restoration of the human rights and civil liberties of the people and putting thrust on development process in the state, which had suffered severely as a result of the conflict.
She said the PDP and the Congress alliance in fact achieved more than the people had expected and Omar Abdullah was fortunate to have inherited an atmosphere of hope that he converted into complete despair.
Mehbooba said the current coalition is being used by the NC only for promoting the interests of the Sheikh family. She said this coalition is based on compromises and hiding of each others’ scandals. She said the ‘dirty tricks department’ of the NC has been selectively leaking the misdeeds of the Congress ministers and others whom they are uncomfortable with. She said in 2010 Omar Abdullah himself confirmed that he had referred the corruption cases of four ministers, including that of the one alleged to have acquired a billion rupee property in Dubai, to the state vigilance department for probe. “But nothing was even heard of it,” she said.
Omar Abdullah took quick action against G M Saroori and divested him of his job as minister but when a more serious allegation was leveled against Peerzada Mohd Sayeed he could do nothing as the minister reminded him of his involvement in the Haji Yousuf death and corruption scandal that had surfaced by then.
Referring to the silence of Chief Minister on the latest scandals denting its credilibilty further, Mehbooba said Omar Abdullah is trying to use this situation only to promote the interests of his family. She said the government has already constituted a sub-committee of the cabinet for transferring the SKIMS at Soura to the Sheikh family. “It has been established by the High Court that the institute has absolutely no contribution from the family and it has been constructed and is run exclusively on government money,” said Mehbooba.
She said there have been reports that the Congress ministers had opposed this brazen attempt at privatizing SKIMS and handing it over to a family. But there are reports that behind the silence of Chief Minister attempts are being made to blackmail the Congress ministers on the spurious drug scandal, the forest land grab and the PHE scandal and hush up these cases only if they endorse the cabinet memo for transferring the SKIMS to the family.
