“When we arrest stone-pelters, we face enormous political pressure to release them because some of the stone-pelters are from both the PDP and the NC. Both parties use their own influence to subvert law and order,”
From their political philosophy to socio-cultural idiom, every innate fault line within the PDP-BJP alliance is proving to be antithetical to governance and security in Jammu and Kashmir.
Two years after they come to power in Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP and the PDP are locked into a war of words both publicly and privately, each blaming the other for massive mob violence, rising militancy and the embarrassingly low voter turnout in the recent parliamentary bypolls in Kashmir.
The main thorn in each side is the approach of the other towards dealing with stone-pelters and mob violence. The BJP’s approach is what the PDP calls “confrontationist” politics and the PDP’s approach is what the BJP calls “appeasement” politics. The BJP has persistently asked chief minister Mehbooba Mufti to go tough against stone-pelters and not succumb to the political pressure created by the NC that has donned the same soft-separatist role that the PDP used to play during the Omar Abdullah government from 2008 to 2014.
Police and security agencies in Kashmir have been complaining that the confusion at the top level has led to mayhem and collapse of the entire security system. “When we arrest stone-pelters, we face enormous political pressure to release them because some of the stone-pelters are from both the PDP and the NC. Both parties use their own influence to subvert law and order,” said a senior police officer who didn’t want to be named.
There has been a three-fold increase in rioting and a substantial rise in arson cases in 2016. According to official data, there were 3,404 cases of rioting in 2016 as compared to 1,157 such cases in 2015. Police registered as many as 267 cases of arson in 2016 as compared to 147 in 2015. Of the total 2,690 incidents of stone pelting, north Kashmir accounts for the highest number of 1,248 incidents followed by 875 incidents in south Kashmir and 567 in central Kashmir in 2016.
The PDP’s core constituency has been Jamat-e-Islami, a pan-Islamist socio-political organization whose militant wing is Hizbul Mujahideen. “It came to prominence and power playing soft-separatism and by winking at militants. It is still doing the same,” a BJP leader said adding that the paralysis of the PDP towards security had also led to overall lack of governance, transparency and accountability.
However, the general perception in Kashmir since the killing of around 80 civilians last year is that Mufti has been reduced to a titular head by the Modi government and under her very nose, rights abuse is taking place with absolute impunity.
Former chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who forged the alliance with the BJP had called it “an alliance between people of Kashmir with the rest of India.” The alliance, he had hoped, was going to bring the people who brought Narendra Modi to power in New Delhi and the BJP in Jammu, closer to the people of Kashmir who elected the PDP in the 2014 assembly elections.
“It was an incompatible partnership between two antagonistic parties to begin with. The BJP is the political arm of the RSS, a Hindu Right wing organization that has aspirations of turning secular India into a Hindu nation,” a disgruntled PDP leader said.
The PDP attributes the current unrest in Kashmir to the BJP’s decision to discontinue political engagement with separatists and Pakistan and for not carrying forward other confidence building measures in the valley.
The relations have soured so much that BJP minister Chandra Prakash Ganga crassly said that Kashmiri stone-pelters should be dealt with “bullets only”. The party disowned the statement and the minister retracted his insensitive statement but the damage was already done for the PDP that calls stone-pelters “alienated youth” in Kashmir. The PDP lost face in the valley also when the BJP general secretary Ram Madhav defended the Army’s decision to tie a stone-pelter to an armored vehicle to prevent stone pelting and rescue soldiers.
“We find it hard to defend our alliance with the BJP in Kashmir also because of the lynching of innocent Muslims to death over the suspicions of beef by cow vigilantes and the militant brand of Hindutava in the Hindi heartland,” a PDP leader told the TOI.
As fissures between the two parties have deepened, the coalition’s finance minister Haseeb Drabu met Madhav in the BJP office at Jammu on Friday. Sources said they discussed the growing distance and tension between the two allies.
Both the NC and the Congress have been demanding imposition of governor’s rule for restoration of law and order. Former chief minister Omar Abdullah pointed out that it could not get worse than this since for the first time in 27 years of insurgency, police has advised its men and officers not to visit their homes.
“There is complete chaos in the state. The PDP-BJP combine has pushed the state back to the 1990s when Kashmir saw worst days of militancy,” G A Mir, congress state president said.
