Ashiq Hussain
SRINAGAR, May 27: United Jihad Council (UJC) chairman and Hizbul Mujahideen Chief, Syed Salahuddin has accused the centre appointed interlocutors of aiming to divide Jammu and Kashmir on communal lines.
In a telephonic interview with a local News Agency KNS, the Muzaffarabad based militant commander termed the interlocutors’ report ‘a futile exercise’.
“The report is aimed at dividing the State on communal and sectarian grounds. (Infact) the interlocution was a preplanned conspiracy to divide the State on religious and communal basis,” Salahuddin said.
He alleged that the panel’s report was inspired by saffron agenda “Separatist leadership’s stand on interlocutors’ role has been vindicated as the report plays into the hands of saffron brigade. It is the saffron brigade which has been demanding a separate Jammu state, Union Territory status to Ladakh to ensure that Kashmir is crushed with force,” said Salahuddin.
UJC, headed by Salahuddin is an alliance of Kashmiri militant organizations that supports the right to self determination of people of Jammu and Kashmir or its accession to Pakistan.
The UJC chairman said that the interlocutors have tried to portray Kashmir issue as a ‘problem related governance and administration’. “This report is trying to give Kashmir issue a new colour and tries to convey that improved governance, economy, law-making and social rights will solve everything,” he said.
Salahuddin (65) has been living in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir since he fled Kashmir after unsuccessfully contesting the 1987 elections. Amid allegations of rigging in the elections, Salauhuddin was jailed by the then National Conference government prompting him to pick up the gun in 1989.
Through this report, Salahuddin said, India was trying to discredit the Kashmiri’s 63-year-old struggle by ‘giving it a communal and sectarian twist’.
The centre appointed a team of three interlocutors -Dileep Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and MM Ansari – after unprecedented political unrest in the summer of 2010 in Kashmir to devise a ‘political solution’ to the problem. The panel submitted its report in October 2011 which was flayed by separatists and Bharatiya Janata Party alike.
Salahuddin, who said separatists’ boycott of interlocutors was ‘vindicated’, also accused Central government and intelligence agencies of sabotaging the “freedom movement” in the state by inciting ‘sectarian and communal violence’.
“They are trying to divide us by inciting communal hatred and schism among Muslims on the basis of sects and beliefs, we condemn their designs,” Salahuddin said.
(Hindustan Times)
