IAS officer Shah Faesal quits to protest killings in Kashmir
SRINAGAR : IAS officer from Jammu and Kashmir Shah Faesal, who topped the civil services exam in 2010, resigned on Wednesday in protest against killings in Kashmir and “lack of sincere reach out” from the Centre.
Though speculation is rife that he may join the National Conference to contest the Parliamentary elections from the Baramulla Lok Sabha seat, Faesal said he will announce his future plans in the next two days. National Conference vice-president and former J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah was quick to welcome Faesal’s decision to join politics. “The bureaucracy’s loss is politics’ gain. Welcome to the fold @shahfaesal,” Omar tweeted.
Chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq also welcomed Faesal’s decision to resign. “Welcome the stand to resign by @Shahfaesal to protest unabated killing of Kashmiris by GOI. Hope his outrage over killings and his sentiment that #Kashmirilivesmatter guide his choice of politics,” Mirwaiz tweeted.
Hailing from north Kashmir’s Kupwara town, Faesal had had a successful tenure as the deputy commissioner of Bandipora and director school education, Kashmir. He tried to revamp the government education setup by trying to bring radical changes in the sector.
Faesal had recently returned from a stint as a Fulbright fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. In a statement on Facebook, the 35-year-old said his resignation was also to protest “the marginalisation and invisiblisation of around 200 million Indian Muslims at the hands of Hindutva forces reducing them to secondclass citizens; insidious attacks on the special identity of the state and growing culture of intolerance and hate in mainland India in the name of hyper-nationalism”.
He also talked against the “environment of siege” in the country. “I wish to remind the regime of the day that subversion of public institutions like the RBI, CBI and NIA has the potential to decimate the constitutional edifice of this country and it needs to be stopped. I wish to reiterate that voices of reason in this country cannot be muzzled for long and the environment of siege will need to end if we wish to usher in true democracy,” he wrote on social media.
Faesal’s resignation has come six months after the J&K government initiated disciplinary action against him for a tweet on frequent rapes, which was seen by Centre’s department of personnel and training as his failure to maintain absolute honesty and integrity in discharge of duties.
The outspoken officer had courted another controversy when he compared Article 35-A of the Constitution to a marriage deed between India and Jammu and Kashmir, saying if the constitutional provision granting special status to the state was scrapped, the marriage will be annulled.
LIKELY TO JOIN NATIONAL CONFERENCE, CONTEST LOK SABHA ELECTIONS FROM BARAMULLA