Speculation rife on Mehbooba’s release

Arun Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jammu, August 3

Mehbooba Mufti, the jailed PDP president and former Chief Minister of the erstwhile state of J&K, is now the sole leader about whom everyone is talking about after her PSA detention was extended by three months beyond August 5, the day she was detained last year, and a campaign seeking her release has been launched by political parties and social media activists.

August 5 sums up the simmering anger of sections of Kashmiris disturbed over the revocation of the special status, breaking up of the state into two UTs. In contrast, it also paints the happy faces of the saffron party leaders “who think they have achieved everything by striking down Article 370”.

Mehbooba is an emotional person and a strong votary of preserving Kashmir’s unique identity.

As CM, she had delivered an extraordinarily bold speech on August 15, 2017. “We stand as one on preserving our identity and special status, and raised a clenched fist, saying, “we may be having differences with other groups, when it comes to our identity, I urge Farooq sahab to lead us”. And her fist went up further.

It stood in contrast to her gesture on August 15, 2016, when she had kept the Tricolour afloat by stretching it and after the flag fell to the ground from pole.

She has seen many trials and tribulations in her political career since 1996 when she was thrown into the whirlpool of Kashmir politics by her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. He made her contest the Assembly polls, which she won.

Mufti Sayeed had acknowledged that Mehbooba was against alliance with the BJP. She showed her reluctance to take over as CM after her father’s death in January 2016. She was urged to form the government, but in June 2018, the BJP withdrew support to her government.

Today, there is a question. Why she alone, among all three former CMs, is still in detention? In the absence of clear answers, she is the most-talked-about politician in Kashmir at the moment.