Mehbooba Mufti’s Futile ‘Wiggling’

BY: RANBIR MANHAS PUBLISHED ON JANUARY 8, 2019

I have been a great fan of Mufti Mohammed Sayed with whom I worked for nearly 4 decades and it is due to this fact that I remained associated with Mehbooba Mufti also who is few years younger to me. This way she is as dear to me as my own younger sister Anjana who is also of Mehbooba Mufti’s age. However I couldn’t go well with her organizationally like her father who was cordial, open hearted and friendly with juniors. I am sure PDP wouldn’t have met the fate it is meeting had Mufti Sayed been alive today! Mehbooba is also a good person however, unlike her father she is a bit dictatorial and undemocratic with whom both seniors and juniors feel uneasy. And now when she has lost the power she became more aggressive and arrogant with the result that her own ‘family members’ preferred to desert PDP making things easier for her adversaries. People join politics to get in to the seat of power and do everything to remain stuck there for 5 or 6 years as the term may be. But Mehbooba Mufti is the first politician in my memory who lost power in the midst of the term because of her immature moves. As leader of the coalition it was her prime obligation to keep the coalition intact by honestly sticking to the CMP but instead of doing so she went ahead with her own agenda which could satisfy her constituency only at the cost of the coalition partners.

Her decisions like mass amnesty to stone pelters and unilateral ceasefire during holy month of Ramdan last year were enough to irritate BJP that had to face acute criticism across the country but BJP showed little resistance believing that it might be PDP’s political compulsion to do that. But she had other things in mind which came to surface when mysterious Rasana took place. Instead of recognizing the sacrifices of BJP Mehbooba Mufti went to the extent of dividing of her coalition partner. Had she behaved rationally, she would have recommended CBI probe in the sensitive case and saved her government from falling. And now when elections are around the corner she is trying to blame BJP for deceiving her merely to mislead her voters. But my friends in Kashmir opine that she would not find any takers for her fake theory and believe her crocodile tears.

Mehbooba has lost the chair; lost the party; lost her credibility and also the ‘game’. Now instead of crying over the spilt milk she should replace her ‘advisors’; remove moles from the party and begin afresh understanding that none of the unconditionally released ‘youth’ will ever come to her rescue.