Time for President Rule and reorganization

Campaign in Kashmir in support of employees dismissed over terror links

• July 10, 2021: Eleven government employees, including Hizb chief Syed Salahuddin’s sons, were dismissed over terror links.
• Sept 22, 2021: Six employees, including two cops, sacked for terror links.
• March 30, 2022: Five employees were fired from their jobs for links with terror outfits.
• May 13, 2022: Three employees, including a Kashmir University teacher and police constable, terminated over terror links.
• October 15, 2022: Four employees, including a bank manager, were dismissed over terror links.
• June 8, 2024: Four employees, including constables and a teacher, sacked for terror links.
• November 29, 2024: Two employees, including a teacher and a pharmacist, were dismissed over terror links.

The Lieutenant Governor dismissed these two employees for the first time after Omar Abdullah assumed the office of Chief Minister on October 16, 2024.

The war against terrorist ecosystem

It needs to be underlined that Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha’s administration has launched what is being described as a “war against terrorist ecosystem” and “its key stakeholders, who were surreptitiously inducted into the government machinery by political regimes of different shades in the past.” “Our policy is clear-zero tolerance towards terrorism. The LG administration is determined to make Jammu and Kashmir terror-free. It (dismissal of government employees over terror links) is a wake-up call to terrorist supporters and their handful sympathizers that they could be struck regardless of operating covertly under various cover,” the government has from time to time said.
Again, it needs to be underlined that since the abrogation of Article 370/ special status on August 5, 2019, sixty-six government employees, including eleven dismissed between January and November 2024, have been sacked over terror links. They were dismissed under Article 311 (2)(c) of the Constitution after investigation by law enforcement and intelligence agencies established their terror links.

Pro-separatist explosions in Kashmir

However, it was the dismissal of the two government employees on November 29, 2024, which, on the one hand, provoked pro-separatist explosions in Kashmir, and, on the other, made the Kashmiri Muslim outfits, separatist and so-called mainstream included, to raise questions over Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s authority on the Jammu and Kashmir government.

Separatist All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who remained dormant/out of the news for almost five years, Mehbooba Mufti’s separatist Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), votary of separate Kashmiri nationhood Sajad Lone’s Peoples Conference (PC), pro-Pakistan Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party (AIP), pro-special status Altaf Bukhari‘s Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP) and the pro-semi-independence ruling National Conference (NC) all joined hands and launched a no-holds-barred campaign in favour of the dismissed employees. They also targeted Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha’s administration. Some of them used the dismissal of the employees as an opportunity to settle scores with Omar Abdullah and his NC.

Condemning the dismissal of the two government employees, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said: “Two more government employees terminated by the stroke of a pen without any legal recourse! Families were rendered destitute before the onset of harsh winters. Punishment and fear are the hallmarks of an authoritarian mindset that has been ruling us here.” He also urged Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to reinstate all the employees who have been terminated “in an unjust manner.” “The elected administration should take immediate measures to stop this injustice and reinstate all the terminated in this unjust manner even without a hearing,” the separatist leader said.

The PDP’s youth wing chief and MLA, Waheed-ur-Parra, who remained in jail for months in a terror-funding case, said: “It’s shocking how the government acts as judge, jury, and executioner, denying the aggrieved even a proper hearing. Such brazen overreach is unacceptable and must stop. Omar Abdullah Sahab heads the GAD (General Administration Department) — silence on these terminations cannot be justified.”

“The newly elected government is a mute bystander twiddling their thumbs as more government employees are fired on mere suspicion and flimsy grounds. Only in Kashmir are you guilty until proven otherwise. This criminalization of livelihoods must stop,” said Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter, Iltija Mufti.

The PC chairman, author of ‘Achievable Nationhood’ and MLA, Sajad Lone, took the dismissal of two government employees as an opportunity to tear into Omar Abdullah. Denouncing him on what he called “key issues, including the termination of government employees,” Lone said that the “administration lacked the courage to stand up to Delhi (and) had no qualms about targeting Kashmiri locals”; “not a single day passes when the elected government is not undermined”; “again you (Omar Abdullah) are quiet.” He also accused Omar Abdullah of “abandoning his aggressive anti-BJP stance post-election and instead displaying ‘rookie enthusiasm’ in surrendering to the BJP.”

The AIP leader and MLA, Shiekh Khursheed, said that the “blame of this terminations also lies on Omar Abdullah and the NC government.”

The JKAP chief, Altaf Bukhari, said: “At the very least, people expect the elected government to use its authority and influence to ensure that terminated employees are given a fair chance to be heard. This is not only about the two individuals who have been dismissed from service without due process, but also about their families…The pattern and method of terminating employees from service devastates their families as well, making it a matter of livelihood for them. The government cannot, and should not, remain silent on this matter…”

The NC spokesman, Imran Nabi Dar, said: “As promised in our manifesto, the JKNC will review all the cases, including arbitrary termination of employees. We have maintained that due process has to be followed in all such cases. Unfortunately, the domain still comes under the LG. That is why we want restoration of statehood as soon as possible”.

It would not be out of place to mention that the NC and Omar Abdullah have been vocal critics of what they term the “arbitrary terminations of government employees in the Union Territory.”

Fit case for President Rule

These pro-terrorist explosions in Kashmir plus the manner in which the Omar Abdullah Government passed the special status resolution in the Assembly on November 8, are the reasons why the NC and other Kashmiri outfits want the restoration of statehood and its exclude-Jammu province-from-the-employment-sector policy should open the eyes of those in the New Delhi’s corridors of power, Nirvachan Sadan, and even in the country’s highest court. They facilitated Assembly elections in the Union Territory overlooking the nature of Kashmiri Muslim leadership and its medievalist ideology, its anti-state attitude, and its rabidly anti-Jammu stance. They should have gone through the history of separatism in Kashmir between March 1846, when Maharaja Gulab Singh founded the State of Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh, and June 2018, when the Narendra Modi government brought down the Mehbooba Mufti-led coalition government in the State. Sadly, they didn’t consider it politically prudent and the result is before our eyes.

The Central government would do well to nip the evil in the bud. It must recognize that the Kashmiri leadership is as undesirable, dangerous, fanatic, and exclusivist as it is utterly undependable. It must recognize and appreciate that the situation in Kashmir has been extraordinary and an extraordinary situation requires extraordinary treatment. What could be that extraordinary treatment? To start with the imposition of President Rule it should be followed by reorganization of the Union Territory in such a manner that grants full state status to the under-threat Jammu province and converts Kashmir into a Chandigarh-type Union Territory.

The moral of the story is that the nation just cannot afford a terrorist-friendly government in this frontier Union Territory.

Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.

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