Conflict

PDP-BJP are partners in crime and an entire generation might have to pay with their blood, says Tasaduq Mufti

Tasaduq Mufti, JK’s Tourism Minister has told the Indian Express that PDP and BJP have ‘ended up being partners in a crime (for which) an entire generation of Kashmiris might have to pay with their blood”.

Tasaduq told the newspaper that the view is not his personal but is the ‘overwhelming sentiment’ within the PDP.

Although Mufti is not the party’s official spokesman, his views carry weight because besides being a minister in the PDP-BJP government, he is also son of the late PDP patron and former CM Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and brother of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti.

“Today the threat is that while we are in control, we are no longer trusted,” he said. “We were supposed to be partners in rebuilding of this place but, sad to admit this, due to the non-fulfilling of commitments, we have ended up being partners in a crime that an entire generation of Kashmiris might have to pay with their blood”.

Also, the horrific rape of a child in Kathua and the manner in which a section of the local BJP has railed against the police in support of the accused has also touched off many nerves in the PDP.

“The brutal murder-rape of a tribal child and the subsequent communal politics over it has pushed the state to a new low and brought shame to all of us…If coalition politics is about living with a series of failures and ignominies, then I am sorry I don’t know how to hide my awkwardness and discomfort with it,” he told Indian Express.

Pointing to what he called the “epidemic of pellet-gun related blindness” and “the massiveness of funerals given to slain militants,” Mufti said that “the alienation has reached a level now where it can lead to bloodshed of a scale that doesn’t find a precedent in history”.

This is the strongest indictment by the Peoples Democratic Party of its alliance with the BJP since it came to power in 2015.

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