‘People resisting atrocities now because PDP gave them confidence for doing so’
Srinagar: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Wednesday, while reacting to the statement of NC Vice President Omar Abdullah, has stated that what Kuka Parray used to represent as an individual was adopted as an official policy by the national conference government after the 1996 elections.
While responding to NC Vice President Omar Abdullah’s recent statement that Kuka Parray would’ve been CM had NC not contested 1996 polls, senior PDP leader Naeem Akhtar said that soon after coming to power in 1996, national conference strengthened the concept of Task Force and converted the entire democratic system to favor Ikhwan. He said that the time between 1996 and 2002 was used by the national conference to sell out state’s vital interests, bringing POTA, Catch and Kill, selling state’s water resources, strangulating the people of the state, killing innocent civilians and making thousands disappear because there was no opposition to its anarchic and despotic rule at that time. “What Kuka Parray used to represent as an individual was adopted as an official policy by the national conference government after 1996 polls. NC had 60 seats in the assembly and that was the only time the state had the maximum advantage to negotiate a decent deal with centre.
But it was filtered away for a junior ministerial position in central government along with penalty in the shape of atrocities that have no parallel,” Akhtar said, adding that even the Narasimha Roa government had publically promised sky from a foreign land for the people of the state but NC thought only of concentrating power in one family and making the people slaves who would not have any option but to be bonded to the national conference.
Akhtar said that despite having no electoral compulsions, NC went into the lap of BJP which oversaw massacres like Gujarat in which Muslims in hordes were slaughtered on streets. “You (NC) didn’t even protest at that time against the Pogrom and maintained a stoic silence at the time when autonomy was rejected which was the ultimate snub that the people of the state got in its 70 years of association with the country. The truth is that NC demeaned the position of Jammu and Kashmir in every possible way,” Akhtar said.
The PDP leader added that the national conference institutionalized official terror which was dismantled only in 2002 by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. “If the people are now aware and they resist atrocities it is because of the change that PDP brought from 2002 and gave people the confidence to protect their rights,” Akhtar said.
