Category: Union Territory

“You don’t know what I can do to you. I will get you skinned alive and hang you. How can you write this against my husband”, she said.

Srinagar: The wife of a senior PDP leader and parliament member Saturday threatened to kill Shamim Me’raj, Editor of The Kashmir Monitor newspaper.

The MP’s wife was upset with an editorial that the newspaper had carried about the MP.

In a phone conversation lasting over 4 minutes, the MP’s wife not only abused the editor but also threatened to get him eliminated.” You don’t know what I can do to you. I will get you skinned alive and hang you. How can you write this against my husband”, she said.

“If my husband wanted he could have become the CM in 2006. I know who runs this paper. You see what I will do to you”, she went on.

The PDP Lok Sabha MP, Muzaffar Hussain Baig’s wife Safeena Baig Saturday threatened to get The Kashmir Monitor Editor, Shamim Meraj, “skinned alive and eliminated”.
Safeena was upset over an Editorial ‘The Kashmir Monitor carried on August 13 over Muzaffar Baig’s affluent praise of PM Modi.
Calling from Baig’s New Delhi Mobile number, the MP’s wife, sounding extremely agitated and upset, hurled volley of abuses at KM Editor before going on to say, “You don’t know who I am. I will come and skin you alive and then hang you. You are jealous of my husband. You don’t know who he is. I will come to your office and show you what I can do if you don’t apologise.”
Baig’s wife then went on with a series of expletives which cannot be published. She also made references to other senior PDP leaders, abusing them and accusing them of hatching conspiracies against her husband.
In the conversation that lasted over four minutes, the MP’s wife kept abusing KM Editor, his friends and family members. She went on to say that had Baig wanted, he would have become the Chief Minister in 2006.
“You think my husband wants to become the CM? If Baig sahib wanted he could have become the Chief Minister in 2006. You think he needs that. How can you write all this! I will expose you. I know who runs this paper, I know you are all jealous of my husband. The Chief Minister is my sister,” Safeena said.
“You think you run are a journalist. Let me tell me you no one reads your newspaper. It’s a piece of trash. Tell your father also. You are not running a newspaper, you are running a mafia. You and your father think you will run this state”, she ranted.
The Kashmir Monitor, later in day, lodged a formal complaint against Safeena in police station Kothi Bagh. 
This is perhaps for the first time in recent years that a politician’s wife is going about threatening to get people killed. 
In the Omar Abdullah led National Conference –Congress alliance, the wife of a Congress Cabinet Minister from South Kashmir was known to abuse, threaten and harass party and government officials.

KEG Aghast

Kashmir Editors Guild (KEG) has taken a strong exception to a threatening phone call made by an MP’s wife to Editor, Kashmir Monitor.

In a statement issued here today, a spokesman of KEG said that wife of a senior PDP leader and MP called Shamim Me’raj and threatened to ‘skin and hang him.’

The lady in question was reacting to an editorial published in Kashmir Monitor.

While describing the lady’s phone call as uncalled for and unacceptable, the spokesman said that any interference in the editorial policy of any newspaper by anyone, no matter how powerful he or she may be, will not be taken lying down.

Barkha Dutt

In May 2013 after his electoral victory, Nawaz Sharif said something that for years, no Pakistani leader had dared to express. Sharif told me, “civilian supremacy over the military is a must.” He went a step further and said, “The prime minister is the boss, not the army chief. This is what the constitution says. We all have to live within the four walls of the constitution.”

This week, Pakistan’s Supreme Court disqualified Sharif for life, ostensibly because his three children were named in the Panama Papers and were charged with having undeclared properties abroad through offshore companies. Ultimately, he was found guilty on a technicality unrelated to the Panama Papers.

But was Sharif’s dismissal written into the script the day he asserted his civilian rights? Sharif seems to be paying the price for trying to restore some authority to the office of the prime minister. He also took on a foreign policy agenda that was inimical to the shadowy Pakistani security establishment that has often used terrorist groups as strategic assets against both India and Afghanistan. Earlier this year, amid spiraling tensions between India and Pakistan,  Sharif told me he was attempting a renewed rapprochement; his India policy is certainly one reason why he was disliked by his army.

Sharif’s ouster is being celebrated by some as an example of Pakistan upholding the best democratic values of accountability. “It’s the biggest victory for the rule of law in Pakistan’s history,” said Naeem Ul-Haque, of the opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Haque is an aide to glamorous cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan — the main petitioner in the case demanding action against Sharif. “Rule of law is the spirit of democracy,” Haque insisted.

In fact, this verdict is the exact opposite. It weakens the country’s tenuous democracy and allows its all-powerful army to grab power without having to formally seize it. Pakistan’s Supreme Court did not even permit Sharif the benefit of a legal trial, accepting instead the findings of an investigative panel, on which two of the six members were from the same military establishment that wanted his exit. “This is a judicial coup,” Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States, said to me in an interview. “Had this been about corruption, there would have been a trial, not direct intervention by the Supreme Court, which should only be the court of final appeal in criminal matters. The military in Pakistan knows the difficulties of a military coup, so now hidden powers are using the judiciary.” The Supreme Court of Pakistan has validated previous military coups citing what it calls the “doctrine of necessity.”

Indeed, in Pakistan, the military is the ventriloquist and politicians are the puppets. No elected prime minister has completed a full term.

When Sharif won in 2013, it was the first peaceful transition of power from one elected government to another. But even Sharif’s predecessor and opponent, Asif Ali Zardari, had to live with his government’s prime minister being ousted by the Supreme Court. Sharif himself has been sacked twice before as prime minister; in 1993, he was ousted by the president, and in 1999, his army chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, seized power in a brazen takeover. Musharraf’s hijacking of the government was the third successful army takeover in Pakistan. Since then, many Pakistanis have argued that their nation is “post-coup.”  Sharif’s ouster proves that claim is a lie.

Sharif’s  has been sent home — not because of  “Panama Gate” but because, believe it or not, he failed to be “sadiq” and “ameen,” or truthful and trustworthy. These vaguely worded criteria, borrowed from Arabic, were brought into law by another military dictator, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, under the contentious clauses of Articles 62 and 63 of Pakistan’s constitution. A godsend for military authoritarianism, these arbitrary provisions are meant to benchmark morally upright leaders and disqualify them if needed. Sharif, the court says, was untruthful about not drawing a salary of 10,000 dirhams a month (about $2,700) as chairman of a Dubai-based company (Capital FZE) owned by his son, until nearly a year after assuming office. Sharif’s lawyers argued that this involved an Emirati work permit procured during the years Musharraf forced him into exile. Investigators insist Sharif did not declare this additional income; the former Prime minister argued that he never used the money.

Now contrast these relatively small charges with Musharraf,  who stands accused of high treason as well as having a role in the murder of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The military weighed in, and Musharraf was allowed to leave the country with the permission of the courts.

This glaring double standard is what undermines Pakistan’s democracy. “It is a populist judgment, which has opened the doors for the disqualification of politicians on flimsy grounds,” warns Asma Jahangir, one of Pakistan’s most respected lawyers. “It is highly flawed in procedure and substance.” Jahangir told me she understand the concern over corruption and conceded that the Sharif family — with huge business interests in steel and sugar — would have to address these questions, but added: “What  is the hurry; why the short cuts? He has a right to due process.”

Sharif’s political opponents, such as Khan, may be rejoicing at his ouster. But Pakistani friends say he should know that this verdict sets a dangerous precedent. Tomorrow it could be Khan.  Pakistanis speak of the army’s “Minus-3 Formula,” meaning that the military has already pushed three major national leaders — Altaf Hussain, Sharif and Zardari — into oblivion.   It’s official: Pakistan’s military no longer needs martial law to control the nation.

Srinagar: Pakistan fishes in the troubled waters of Jammu and Kashmir but they are not the creators of unrest in Kashmir, former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said on Saturday.

Speaking at a Kashmir conclave here, the opposition National Conference leader said he was aware that it was popular to blame Pakistan for everything that is happening in the troubled state.

“We know that Pakistan fishes in troubled waters, but we also know that they are not the creators of the sort of agitation that we have seen in 2008, 2010 and 2016,” Abdullah said.

The former union Minister of State for External Affairs was referring to the three deadliest street protests Kashmir has witnessed in the nearly three-decades of separatist war.

New Delhi has been blaming Islamabad for inciting and sponsoring trouble in Jammu and Kashmir — a charge Pakistan has been denying.

He said ruling Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) inability to deliver on promises like making peace between India and Pakistan and initiating talks between the central government and separatists has cost the mainstream politicians their credibility in the state.

Abdullah said the case in point was the agenda of alliance between the PDP and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“I think what is important is that we as regional political players understand our limitations. The problem arises when in our desire to attract votes in elections, we sell promises far beyond our ability to deliver.

“It is not within the scope of the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir to decide whether India and Pakistan are going to engage with each other. When we fight election on the promise that we will make peace between India and Pakistan you are setting yourself up for defeat.

“Similarly with the best of intentions, the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir cannot arm-twist the Union of India to engage with the Hurriyat Conference.”

He said the PDP fought the 2014 assembly elections promising they would facilitate a dialogue without a precondition between the central government and the Hurriyat.

But the PDP-BJP has not delivered the promise despite it forming the “cornerstone of the agenda of alliance”.

“When you enter into agreements like the agenda of alliance and find that it is gradually being dismembered and you see the developments as they have taken place over the last six to eight months, then obviously question marks arise against mainstream polity.”

He said the mainstream politicians needed to focus on the things that they could deliver.

“And here in lies my major grievance with (Chief Minister) Mehbooba Mufti. The fact is that set aside the things that she has not been able to do that are not within her control. Focus on the things that you can do,” Abdullah said.

Abdullah said the blame for the shrinking space of mainstream political parties had to be shared by the central government as institutions like the Election Commission were also not in a position to show how much their writ run in the state.

“It is not just mainstream political players that are responsible for what is happening, the Union of India is also responsible. Whether it was the UPA government or the NDA government,” he said.

Abdullah cited an example of the cancellation of the parliamentary election in Anantnag following violent protests in Kashmir and said it was for the first time that the separatist Hurriyat Conference had been handed over an electoral victory.

“This is the first election in Jammu and Kashmir which the Hurriyat Conference have won, because since 1996 whenever elections were called the Hurriyat Conference had a single point agenda that some how this election should not take place. This is the first time on the back of protests you cancelled an election and handed victory to them.”

He said the cancellation of the south Kashmir election proved the inability of the Indian government and the Election Commission to make their writ run in Jammu and Kashmir. IANS

Srinagar: More than a year has passed, but the 37 schools that were set afire by miscreants during the unrest last year are yet to be built as the government has no funds.A total of 5,000 students studying in these government schools were affected. Most of the schools were burnt in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district, the epicentre of the 2016 unrest.”The state government has no funds to rebuild the schools. We have prepared a proposal and submitted it to the Central government. We are awaiting release of funds to rebuild the schools and if the funds are not released then we will look for an alternative. But right now, there is no progress on rebuilding,” Minister of Education Syed Altaf Bukhari said. “Till now I have not succeeded in reconstructing the schools,” he said.The minister admitted that the students who studied in these schools were suffering academically and said the reconstruction takes time. “We have shifted the students to rented accommodations and nearby schools till some permanent arrangement is done,” Bukhari said.A senior official of the Department of Education said no serious efforts were being taken to rebuild the schools. “That (burning of schools) was a major setback to education. People have forgotten about these schools. I am not even sure whether they will be rebuilt any time soon. Most of the schools are in rural Kashmir where it takes decades to even establish a school,” the official said.The burning of schools became the focal point of unrest last year after Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani’s killing.Around 37 schools were either partially or fully damaged in the fire incidents and the education sector suffered an infrastructural damage of Rs 10 crore during the unrest last year.

5,000 students affected

Most of the schools were burnt in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district, the epicentre of the 2016 unrest. A total of 5,000 students were affected* Around 37 schools were either partially or fully damaged in the fire incidents and the education sector suffered an infrastructural damage of Rs 10 crore during the unrest last year (TNS)