In a surprising turn of events, ex CM of Jammu & Kashmir and current PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti Sayyed’s cavalcade was attacked by stone pelters in Anantnag, where she was campaigning for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Enroute for her electoral campaigning, Mehbooba Mufti happened to visit a shrine. After paying her respects to the shrine, Mehbooba set out for her journey to Bijbehara, when her cavalcade was attacked by stone pelters. She narrowly escaped the assault, but the driver of a spare vehicle in the cavalcade was not so lucky. He suffered minor injuries in the assault. This is quite surprising, since Mehbooba Mufti commands immense popularity in Anantnag, from where she contested the previous Lok Sabha polls of 2014, and won with a handsome margin.
On the condition of anonymity, a PDP leader told the media, “A few stones were thrown at the last vehicle of the cavalcade leading to minor injuries to the driver. Mehbooba Mufti’s vehicle was not hit by any stone.”
While political rival and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah sprang into action by condemning the incident, Mehbooba Mufti indirectly blamed the BJP for the current situation, as she said, “He tried to incite communal riots here and create polarization. Then he did Balakot attack drama. Now after the first phase of elections BJP is seeing a loss, the way a sense of insecurity is being created among people, it appears they are planning to make another attack on Pakistan like Balakot so that they get votes during (upcoming phases in) elections.”
However, the truth is far from the same. Ever since the Central Government gave a free hand to the armed forces to deal firmly with terrorism in the Kashmir Valley since 2016, Mehbooba Mufti, in an attempt to assert power as the then CM of the fragile BJP PDP alliance, started showering affection on the terror sympathizers, including giving immunity to stone pelters from strict police action.
Matters reached to head when she forbade the armed forces from acting harshly against the terrorists during the month of Ramzan in 2017. However, she probably didn’t learn a famous Hindi couplet, which says that no matter how much you feed milk to a snake, it won’t hesitate from biting you back. The same is the case with the vicious stone pelters, who have now struck back at the very people who nurtured them and their nefarious activities. We hope that Mehbooba Mufti takes a lesson or two and changes her attitude towards the stone pelters, if at all she aims to make Kashmir Valley a better place.