KL NEWS NETWORK
SRINAGAR
Chief Minister Ms Mehbooba Mufti on Thursday said she was uninterested in replacing her father but one instance changed her thought process completely.
“When my father was admitted to the hospital and he was seriously ill for four days to the extent that nobody was being permitted in, then there was some relief,” Ms Mufti told a receptive audience in Islamabad. “When a team of doctors visited him, he was angry. He told them ‘you guys are spoiling my time’. He asked them to detail their interventions so that he leaves next day. He told them he has lot many things to do.”
“These words are still resonating in my mind and that was the main factor why I finally agreed to become Chief Minister,” Ms Mufti said. “Before that I was not willing to get into this.”
Attacking her critics for joining hands with BJP, Ms Mufti said when Kashmir acceded to India in 1947 – it acceded to everybody – the Congress, the BJP and the RSS. “The real issue is how to protect our distinct identity – there are two ways one by fighting for it and another by befriending them,” Ms Mufti said. “I told a major conference in Delhi that we will protect Article 370 at all costs because when we take oath of office we swear by the constitution of which this is a part. We are committed on that.”
She said her party is committed to the betterment of J&K and listed the initiatives she was assured of by the RBI governor recently. All the banks operating in the state will have local staff only. She flagged HDFC bank that has all its operations in the state managed by the local staff. She said RBI will be starting coaching for the local students so that they manage the bank entries examinations easily.
“Kashmiri youth have better IQ and that is why Kashmiri Pandits are in all the MNC everywhere,” Ms Mufti said. “The only difference is that they put in more efforts unlike us.”
But most part of her brief speech was addressed towards Delhi. She invoked Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah for the “right decision of accession” and asserted that the situation in the Muslim world right now vindicates that decision.
“Russia and America gave guns to our youth and led them to bring bad name to Islam almost everywhere,” Ms Mufti said. “Iran, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan, you know what is happening. In Syria, the last paediatric doctor was killed last week and there are reports of children surviving by eating paper.”
Ms Mufti said her father was convinced as early as 1960 when he returned from AMU that Ganga-Jamuna culture suits Kashmir. “In this country, Muslims chisel the Hindu gods and more Hindus go to Ajmer than Muslims,” Ms Mufti said. “He (Mufti) never changed that belief and lived it.”
Chief Minister, however, regretted that for all these years everything bad that existed in India was sent here like rigging in elections, gun and the crackdown. “Let us get all the best things that exist in India to Kashmir because these good things were never permitted to get here,” she said.
