Taking a dig at Dr Farooq for his statement in a public rally at Mandi in Poonch condemning the demand of “Azadi” which he had advocated only a couple of days back while making a speech in a seminar organised by Central University, Kashmir in Srinagar, a press release of Bharatiya Janata Party has stated that the double face of Farooq Abdullah has been exposed once again. “Knowing fully well that there are no takers of Azadi, south of PirPanjal, Farooq has very cleverly changed his stance by demanding the Line of Control (LoC) to be converted into a Line of Peace thus making it amply clear that his party has no ideology and only believes in arousing passions by playing with people’s emotions for vote-bank politics,” explained the spokesperson of the party, Brig Anil Gupta.
Farooq thinks that the people do not understand the game he is playing. National Conference has survived as a political party by posing itself as the well-wisher of Kashmiri speaking Muslims. It has always been wary of losing prominence due to the challenge posed by other Muslims like Paharis, Punjabis, Gujjars& Shia, in general and Muslims of erstwhile Jammu province in particular. Same fear continues to haunt Farooq and Co even today and that is why rather than uniting the population living across the LoC, he advocates it to be made a permanent border, asserted Brig Gupta. It was for the same very reason that his father, the Sheikh forced Prime Minister Nehru to announce unilateral ceasefire when the invaders were on the run and Indian Army was well poised to recapture the areas of Mirpur, Kotli, Poonch, and Muzaffarabad. Had Muzaffarabad been recaptured, the strategic areas of Gilgit-Baltistan, Hunza and other frontier districts would have automatically returned to India as all lines of communications to these areas passed through Muzaffarabad and also saved the state from the problem of refugees which haunts the state till date, highlighted the press release.
NC’s dislike of non-Kashmiri speaking Muslim leaders is evident from the fact that when Mirza Afzal Beg resigned from the Maharaja’s cabinet in 1945 due to differences within the party, the Maharaja appointed Mian Ahmed Yar, a National Conference leader from Jammu. MianYar was however expelled from the Party because his being in the council of ministers was not acceptable to Sheikh for Mian being a non-Kashmiri speaking and hailing from Jammu, said Brig Gupta quoting from history.
As regards return of Haji Peer and Chhamb, Brig Gupta asked Dr Farooq to question his ally Congress who not only betrayed the people of the state but also belittled the sacrifices of the Indian Army by returning to Pakistan the territories captured by the later. Has strategic Haji Peer Pass been in our possession today, there would have been no Uri-Poonch Bulge and there was no question of Pakistan launching a proxy war against us as well as it would have provided a direct link between Poonch and Kashmir Valley via Uri, explained Brig Gupta.
