After Kathua rape PDP should have pulled out of alliance with BJP : former advisor to Mehbooba Mufti

New Delhi: After the brutal rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua, the PDP should have been the one to pull out of the alliance with the BJP, a close aide of Mehbooba Mufti disclosed .

Amitabh Mattoo said “Perhaps she should have resigned before but it was a tough cal and ladmitted he should have advised her to pull out of the alliance earlier”.

He further added that “I would have advised Mehbooba, which I didn’t in retrospect incorrectly it seems that now (Kathua rape) is the time to pull out”.

Mattoo said he was certain that had the late CM been alive, the alliance would have survived while defending Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s decision of forming an alliance with the BJP.

He added that “we required the chutzpah, the audacity, the vision of an individual leader, and often we disregard the importance of individual leader, but I think after him, it collapsed”.

“it was a “huge dilemma” for Sayeed for the simple reason that he had secured majority within the Valley but Jammu and Ladakh were completely taken over by the “Modi wave,” he added.

“late former chief minister had never known Prime Minister Narendra Modi and had “assumed that he was a pragmatic (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee like figure who needed to bury the ghost of the past and move on,” Matto urged.

Mufti Mohammed Sayeed felt he could temper the BJP and Sheikh Abdullah’s (founder of National Conference party) greatest error of judgement that he limited his struggle only till the Pir Panjal and never moved to the plains of Jammu. So, by reconciling Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir’s aspirations, they could arrive at a model of reconciliation beyond Jammu and Kashmir and eventually all over South Asia,” he added.

Mattoo recounted that Mehbooba had taken three months to arrive at a decision, and her aim was to solely get a better deal from the Centre.

Vital aspects of the conflict economy, murders for rewards, and terror acts by state-backed mercenaries in Jammu and Kashmir by explored by the book.

In March this year two BJP MLAs Lal Singh and Chander Prakash Ganga participated in a rally to support the accused in the Kathua rape case, who were arrested by the state police’s crime branch widened the rift between the two parties.

In the 2014 J-K assembly elections, the BJP had 25 lawmakers and the PDP 28 in the 89-member state assembly, both far short of the majority mark of 45.

Recognising “the fragility of democratic politics in Kashmir, you had a coup, most of the PDP members were willing to jump the gun and join any party which was going to form the government”, he said.

You will not even trust your own shadow in such situations. The Generation of Rage in Kashmir” has been published by the Oxford University Press. (Agencies)