‘Musa will have no impact as head of Al Qaeda’s affiliate’

E.S.L. Narasimhan, Governor for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, would soon be replaced by two new Governors— D.H. Shankara Murthy for Telangana and Anandiben Patel for Andhra Pradesh, according to reliable sources. The appointments might take place any time after the completion of the election of Vice-President.

An indication to this effect was already made by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to the Chief Ministers of both the states—Chandrababu Naidu (AP) and K. Chandrasekhar Rao (Telangana) when they were in New Delhi to attend the swearing-in of President Ram Nath Kovind this week, according to sources close to KCR.

Shankara Murthy, 76, a senior BJP leader and chairman of the Karnataka Legislative Council, would be sent to Telangana, while 75-year-old Anandiben Patel was the Chief Minister of Gujarat for two years till August 2016. Both are staunch BJP leaders with strong RSS connections.

The AP government hasn’t yet readied a residence to the Governor; so the new appointee will have to work from a makeshift home, sources in the government said. CM Naidu has recently approved designs for construction of a permanent Raj Bhavan in Amaravati and the building would be ready only by the end of 2018. Till then, the government will have to search for a temporary Raj Bhavan for the new governor. Zakir Musa, the breakaway Hizbul Mujahideen commander, was on Wednesday named the leader of “Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind”, which is a propaganda organisation linked to Al Qaeda. The Jammu and Kashmir Police has, however, described Musa as a “dead man walking” with no arms supply and men. Musa was thrown out of Hizbul after he publicly announced that he would kill all separatist leaders in Kashmir. Musa, who wants to wage a war against India in the name of jihad, was enraged with the separatists who maintain that the Kashmir struggle is political, rather than Islamic in nature.

Jammu and Kashmir DGP S.P. Vaid on Friday told the media that they will assess the situation after the announcement. He said that there was no visible pres- ence of the ISIS or Al Qaeda in Kashmir.

The Al Qaeda has been desperate to establish some footprints in India. They had announced their wing for India in September 2014, but could not garner any support from the country’s Muslim youths. The move to announce Zakir Musa as the new head of a global terror outfit is being seen by the police and the intelligence agencies as an attempt to incite young Kashmiri boys into joining their ranks through the Internet.

The police and security forces, who are closely monitoring the perceived “ideological shift” in the new phase of militancy in Kashmir, maintain that there is no support for such outfits in Kashmir currently. The separatist leadership in Kashmir has rejected the role of Al Qaeda, ISIS and other global terror outfits, clarifying that the struggle of the Kashmiris is indigenous in nature.

In a joint statement, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik said that the people of Jammu and Kashmir were fighting for their political rights and that they do not have any global agenda based on religion. They said that Al Qaeda and ISIS were “very dangerous” for the Kashmiri struggle as some agencies were at work to misrepresent this struggle as being a part of a global agenda of some terror organisations. The separatist leadership has described the Al Qaeda and ISIS as pure terrorist organisations.

Zakir Musa is representing a fringe group of Kashmir’s militant outfits. He had earlier described the Kashmir issue as an Islamic issue. The separatist leadership, United Jehad Council chief Syed Salah-ud-Din and Lashkare-Tayyaba had reacted at the time, saying militants like Musa were playing into the hands of the Indian agencies. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has expressed her strong reservation to the Centre over any possible tinkering with Article 35(A) of the Constitution, warning that the development may lead to a situation where nobody in the Kashmir valley will hold the Tricolour. The J&K CM also told the Centre that the recent crackdown on separatists in Kashmir for their alleged hawala links has compounded the resentment and protests on the ground.

Article 35(A) empowers the state’s legislature to define who is a permanent resident of J&K, and give them privileges.

She reminded the Centre that it has taken sacrifices on part of the workers of mainstream political parties such as her People’s Democratic Party and Omar Abdullah led National Conference “to