Jammu, Feb 27 (Inditop.com) The continuous squabbling between the ruling National Conference and the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly has provoked senior Left leader Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami to propose that they be given a separate place “to settle their scores”.
Tarigami, Communist Party of India-Marxist leader and three-time legislator, told the assembly speaker: “Let there be a separate place for the NC and PDP to settle their scores, so that we can raise issues of public importance.”
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah whose taking over the reins of the state in January last year had sparked a lot of expectations among the people, especially the youth, has reiterated on several occasions that he wanted to move ahead and work for the welfare of the state and its people. But he regretted that “vested interests” were throwing obstacles in his way.
In his speech in the assembly, while replying to the motion of thanks on the governor’s address on Thursday, Omar spent more than 70 percent of the 110-minute speech in hauling the PDP and its three-year-rule (2002-05) over the coals.
He blamed the PDP for almost all the ills in the state, ranging from financial irregularities to higher degree of human rights violations.
In turn, PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti and her party have been harping only on the stone-throwers and blaming the Omar Abdullah government for “doing away with the gains of peace and progress achieved during our rule”, by his “mis-governance and non-serious attitude”.
Many people in the sensitive border state are getting increasingly disenchanted with the bickering and the stone pelting by mobs over every issue.
“It is an unfortunate phenomenon that is unfolding in the state, where stone pelting by mobs and the political war between the National Conference and PDP is denting the image of the state at the national level,” commented Mubassir Ahmad, a Kashmiri trader currently in the state’s winter capital Jammu.
“This will affect our tourist season,” he added.
“Earlier, we were seen as all of us were carrying guns, now we are seen as stone throwers. In fact, we are throwing stones at our own image,” Ahmad told Inditop.
The political leadership is failing the masses, feels an angry Praduman Kishen Jad, a Kashmiri Pandit migrant who is looking for a job.
“They were given votes, both NC and PDP got votes in the assembly and parliamentary elections. Now it’s time for them to deliver, rather than raking up issues that concern just their own political egos than matters that affect the common people,” Jad said.
