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J&K CLP leader resigns, sees no future for Congress

Mehbooba Mufti, the Congress legislature party leader and daughter of former home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, today resigned from the Jammu and Kashmir assembly and the primary membership of the Congress.

Talking to reporters in Srinagar, she said she took the decision as the Congress had failed to formulate any meaningful policy on Kashmir. ''I tried my level best to make people in the Congress high command understand the real problem of Kashmir, but I was disappointed. Kashmir was never on the priority list of the Congress,'' Mufti said.

''I took the step with a heavy heart, but I am compelled to do so as I believe it is in the interest of the people of the state and the nation.''

Mufti said she has resigned from the primary membership of the Congress party and sent her resignation letter to the assembly speaker.

In her memorandum to the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, Mufti said that during the Panchmarhi conclave she had raised a question whether the party would only want the land of Kashmir or also the people of Kashmir to be a part of the national mainstream.

She said: ''I posed this question in the hope that it may lead to an honest introspection and a deliberate formulation of a wise and pro-active policy vis-a-vis Kashmir.''

''I had hoped that the Congress would actively mobilise public opinion towards this goal and thereby do its duty to the people of Kashmir and the nation.''

But it was not to be, the interests and sympathy that had surfaced at Panchmarhi soon faded out and the Congress party, at national level, lapsed back into a state of callous indifference to the problem of the Kashmiris, Mufti said.

Now things have come to a pass where one cannot but come to a painful realisation that there was no desire or willingness at the national level to listen to the honest advice and suggestions of the grassroot workers in Kashmir, who continue to face very heavy odds, including threat to their lives, she said.

''We have now come to a stage where we have to make a choice between either languishing in our present stage of apathy and inertia or charting a new course of action, in accordance with the call of our conscience and sense of duty,'' she added.

Mufti, in her memorandum to Sonia Gandhi, wrote: ''You may also recall that when I met you in Delhi this May, I had told you that the people of Kashmir were hoping that the Congress would identify itself with their genuine aspirations to find some reasonable and just solution to their pressing problems.''

There was no real democratic outlet for the people in the state to air their grievances and seek redressal, she said adding that the National Conference had ceased to be a pro-people party and the Congress leadership had failed to formulate a policy that could make it a viable democratic alternative in the state.

''I have also made it clear a number of times that the Congress has no future in Kashmir unless it responds to the imperatives of popular expectations. I had told you that there is a need to boldly confront the realities prevailing in Kashmir and accept the fact that there can be no solution to the real problem of Kashmir without holding an unconditional dialogue with all sections of its population,'' she wrote in the letter.

She further said that only a dialogue could preserve the cultural unity of the state and its glorious tradition and it should be obvious that to impose conditions, prior to the beginning of a dialogue, would subvert the whole idea at the very outset.

Mufti said for the past ten years army and security forces have been fighting militancy in the state, where thousands of innocent men, women and children had lost their lives.

She said there have been instances of excesses on innocent people, by both the sides and now the situation was deteriorating day by day.

She said the move that only the security forces be left to deal with the situation had proved counter productive. Like the other political parties, the Congress too had failed to take appropriate political initiative to begin the long journey towards restoring normalcy in the state.

Mufti said that she had come to the conclusion that the time had come to make a difficult choice. She felt that Congress workers in the state had no option but to carve out their own path and free themselves from the chains in which the debilitating approach of the Congress party's national leadership binds them.

''Accordingly I am resigning as leader of the Congress legislative party in the assembly and also from the assembly.''

When asked if her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed too would resign from the Congress, she said he would speak about his future plans himself.

UNI

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