Srinagar: Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti is flying to New Delhi on Sunday to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the NITI Aayog’s Governing Council meeting and discuss the standoff between her party and the righting BJP.
According to sources, Mehbooba who is attending the NITI Aayog’s Governing Council, which comprises all Chief Ministers, senior union ministers, administrators of Union Territories and Aayog members, in New Delhi that would be chaired by the PM on Sunday.
They said Mehbooba would on the sidelines of the meeting also take up the issue with Modi of how BJP leaders including party’s national general secretary Ram Madhav and State leaders like Chander Prakash Ganga were belittling her government.
The sources said Ganga’s “bullets for stone throwers” remark, Madhav’s “everything is fair in love and war remark” and the rightwing party’s cross-voting on Legislative Council berth that had been promised to PDP has not gone well with Mehbooba and she is seeing it as efforts of the BJP to cut her to size.
They said cross-voting by BJP for the LC berth had put a question mark on her leadership as well as the coalition between the two partners – PDP and BJP.
According to the sources, Mehbooba is irate over the remarks of the Minister for Industries and Commerce, Chander Prakash Ganga, who in a video that went viral on social networking sites had referred to stone throwers as “traitors”.
Ganga had in the video said, “There is only one remedy for them and that is bullets, and if not bullets, they should be given punishments like the youth who are beaten with sticks by (government) forces, take my word next time they (youth) won’t throw stones.”
The sources said Mehbooba is furious that while her government is finding it hard to control the situation on the ground, the BJP leaders were adding further grist to the already burning mill.
They said the CM was particularly irritated over the remarks of Madhav, who despite knowing the sensitivities of the situation in Kashmir had made an “insensitive” remark “everything is fair in love and war”.
According to sources, the CM would take up all these issues with the PM and demand a long rope on running the affairs of the State as she believes the failure of the BJP leadership in understanding the nitty-gritties of Kashmir situation was adversely impacting the performance of her government.
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