Ahmed Ali Fayyaz article continues.....

“Ironically the separatist support structure got the best of its advantages first during the BJP government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1998-2004 and later during the BJP-PDP government in Narendra Modi’s government at the Centre in 2015-1,” he asserted. “They have themselves sown these seeds with the incentivisation of separatism. Now that the militants have staged a comeback and they are eliminating their targets at will, everybody in the government is groping in the dark.”

The current spree of killings began in a week of the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s belligerent address to the UN General Assembly on 24 September 2021. Penitent on the February 2021 ceasefire with the Indian troops on the IB and the LoC, Khan had his speech loaded with signals of hostility for New Delhi. The violence was remarkably stepped up immediately after it was reported in the media that the Union Home Minister Amit Shah would be holding his first visit to J&K after August 2019 in the fourth week of October 2021.

Shah, the pilot of J&K’s reorganisation into a Union Territory without special status in August 2019, is scheduled to visit Srinagar on 22 and 23 October before addressing a massive public rally in Jammu on 24 October. The ruling BJP at the Centre has started extraordinary political activity to make Shah’s visit a grand success. Senior NC leaders Devender Singh Rana and Surjit Singh Salathia joined the BJP last week. Brother of the Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Dr Jitendra Singh, Rana has been the former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s Man Friday continuously since 1998. Reports from Jammu indicate some more significant defections from NC, PDP and other parties to the BJP.

The militants and their political supporters, who have been perceptibly disappointed over the absence of mayhem since August 2019, seem to believe that sabotage to Shah’s ambitious J&K visit would be hugely embarrassing for Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Shah.

To be continued.....