Mehbooba Mufti bats for Indo-Pak dialogue again
JAMMU: : Amid a spike in terror activities, including the recent Sunjuwan terror attack, the president of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti on Friday again batted for the Indo-Pak dialogue to resolve the Kashmir issue.
On April 22, two days ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Jammu, two Jaish fidayeens and a CISF officer were killed in an encounter in Jalalabad near Sunjuwan military station. “If we have given so much powers to security forces to deal with the situation then why Sunjuwan attack and other attacks are taking place. If our sarpanches and panches are getting killed, then the fault lies in our house… with us. We are failing somewhere to deal with 150 to 200 militants. We should also look inside,” she told reporters here. However, when asked the way forward, she said, “Without dialogue there is no way out. You bring more forces, nothing is going to change.”
Given spurt in terror activities, she also raised a question on the heavy concentration of security forces in J&K. “What our army is doing? What our 10 lakh army people are doing if they are not able to deal with terrorists,” she asked. When sought her reaction to new Pakistan PM Shahbaz Sharif raking up Kashmir and demanding its resolution, she said that the issue has to be resolved between the two countries.
Referring to the Shimla and Lahore agreements during the tenure of former PMs Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, she said, “The issue was in UN and until we win the hearts of our people in J&K, talk to them and bring them on our side, Pakistan will continue to rake it up.”
When asked how talks and terror can go together, she said, “Soon after then PM AB Vajpayee had taken a bus to Lahore, Kargil and Parliament attacks happened but talks continued. They weren’t stalled”.
On UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s decision to ban loudspeakers in religious places, she said, “Our nation is based on secular foundations and those who fought for independence like Congress, Dr BR Ambedkar and JL Nehru, laid foundations of this nation on secularism. It is in our DNA and in the DNA of the nation”.
Mufti referred to Pakistan where she said that wrong use of religion has ruined that country. “I fear that if we continue to tread the same path, we may also meet the same fate like Pakistan,” she said.