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Mufti too quits Congress, to launch regional party

The Congress today suffered another setback in Jammu and Kashmir when former Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed resigned from its primary membership.

Sayeed announced that he and other "like-minded people" in the state would soon form a regional party to defeat the ruling National Conference, which he said had ceased to be a pro-people party.

The name of the new party will be announced on July 28 at a conclave in Srinagar.

Sayeed said he resigned as the Congress high command failed to assure him that if it comes to power, it will hold an "unconditional dialogue" with the people of Kashmir to resolve the problem of the state.

The Congress is not the party it used to be in Nehru's time, when one was free to air one's views, he said.

"During my association with the Congress, I found that the party has no Kashmir policy and that Kashmir is not on the list of its priorities," he said.

The former member of Parliament from Anantnag said he and his daughter Mehbooba Mufti, who resigned last week from the party and the state assembly, met senior Congress politicians, including president Sonia Gandhi, several times to make them understand Kashmir's "real problem".

Unfortunately, they do not want to understand the suffering of the people, he added.

"We can win a war with Pakistan, bring more security forces to contain militancy... But they will not take us near an everlasting solution of the Kashmir problem," Sayeed said.

He observed that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had succeeded in averting a war with Pakistan, but until a permanent solution to the Kashmir issue is found, normalcy cannot be guaranteed in this "unfortunate" state.

"I have made it clear a number of times that until we hold unconditional talks with the people of Kashmir, we will not be able to resolve the issue."

He wondered what was wrong in talking to "our own people when we can hold talks with Pakistan or for that matter with people in the North-east".

Sayeed said a number of senior security force officers are also of the opinion that the ultimate resolution of the Kashmir problem will come only through a dialogue, not through bullets.

"The people here feel more alienated with every passing day because of the anti-people policies of the government," he said.

Asked why the Congress did not accept his advice for unconditional talks with the Kashmiris, Sayeed said the party probably felt it would dampen its electoral prospects in the rest of the country.

He said that to heal these grievances of the people, he had decided to form a state-level party. "We will invite participation from like-minded people of all three regions of the state. The name of new party will be announced on July 28 during a convention in which people from these regions will participate," he added.

UNI

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