It all began with a tweet from Mehbooba Mufti where she promised to continue the struggle following the Gupkar Declaration. Readers would recall that on 04 August 2019 an all-party delegation of Kashmir centric political parties met at the Gupkar residence of Dr Farooq Abdullah and resolved to remain together and stand united in their struggle for safeguarding their identity, autonomy and special status which came to be known as Gupkar Declaration, stated Brig Veteran Anil Gupta, Spokesperson of Bharatiya Janata Party in a press release issued at Jammu today.
Following the tweet of Ms Mufti, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad met the Prime Minister which he claimed to be an exclusive meet to discuss political and social affairs of J&K. The crux of his meeting reported himself to the media was the demand for restoration of statehood followed by Assembly elections. Interestingly, Azad did not demand of restoration of Articles 370 and 35A, stated Brig Gupta.
This was followed by the statements of the two icons of the Abdullah dynasty who apart from restoration of statehood and elections thereafter also harped on 370 and 35A like the other dynast of Kashmir Mehbooba Mufti. The resurfacing of the dynasts indicating resumption of political process in valley has been forced upon them by the issues of authority and credibility. While on the one hand they are struggling to keep their parties intact and on the other they are getting worried about losing their relevance and credibility with the people, asserted Brig Gupta. The lukewarm response of people to their arrests came as a big shocker to them. They had expected storms of people on the street but were shocked to know instead that the youth was rejoicing and expressing happiness at their arrest. They later used their family members for token protest to display their relevance.
The ground reality is that they are afraid of going back to the people who hold them whole and sole responsible for their present state of affairs. Now that they have begun to live happily and peacefully, the dynasts are trying to sell them the same old narrative which has been the cause of their sufferings since decades, rued the BJP spokesperson. They know that none of their demands are relevant in the present context but in order to please the hardliners and spoil peace they are resorting to the same old narrative which led to the historic decision of 05 August 2019. Though elections are not on the horizon, their assertion that they would not contest elections in the UT exposes their fear of failure or losing since they are used to becoming MPs and legislators with single digit voting percentage with the help of hardliners and extremists stated Brig Gupta. Both the hardliners and extremists are becoming irrelevant by the day due to the sustained operations launched by the security forces and police.
Brig Gupta also reminded Dr Abdullah that his reference to revocation of 370 as “betrayal” is totally wrong since the people of Ladakh and Jammu, 2/3rd of the then State, had always clamoured for total integration of the state with India while it is on record that Article 370 was included at the insistence of Sheikh Abdullah who wanted to safeguard the Kashmiri identity only.