STATE TIMES NEWS
Srinagar: Prime Minister Narendra Modi can take bold steps like resuming talks with Pakistan and is better for Jammu and Kashmir than his predecessor Manmohan Singh who could not even visit his ancestral home there, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said on Tuesday.
“If there is any leader who can talk to Pakistan it is him (Modi). Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister for 10 years. He had a wish to visit the other side (Pakistan) as he was born there and wanted to see his ancestral home. But he could not muster courage,” Mufti said here.
Modi, she said, went to Lahore in December 2015 on the wedding of Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif’s kin adding that terror attacks in Pathankot, Uri and Nagrota had happened after that.
“Even then, if there is anyone with the mandate to heal the wounds of people of Jammu and Kashmir, take the state out of the morass, start dialogue with Pakistan and make the atmosphere conducive, it is only Narendra Modi and no one else,” Mehbooba said addressing PDP workers in the south Kashmir district of Anantnag.
She was campaigning for her brother Mufti Tassaduq Hussain, who is the party’s candidate for the Anantnag Lok Sabha bypoll. Mehbooba had vacated the seat last year after her election to the Legislative Assembly.
She also emphasised the importance of connecting J&K to the rest of the world saying the closure of traditional routes had affected the State adversely.
“China is constructing road (CPEC) in the part of Jammu and Kashmir on other side of LoC. It will connect that part of the State with China, Central Asia and South Asia,” she said adding that he father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had a similar intention.
He wanted to open all those routes in Kashmir and Jammu regions, she said.
“But after 1947 we were besieged. We were befooled by leaders since 1947. If we had sought opening of these routes, Jammu and Kashmir would have been number one state in the country in terms of development,” she said.
The chief minister said it was for these reasons that Jammu and Kashmir needs a person like Modi at the Centre who has the mandate to take bold decisions.
“We don’t only have Bijli, Pani and Sadak issues, we have humanitarian issues. If they (India and Pakistan) are talking about Indus Water Treaty today,tomorrow they will talk about opening of the roads,” she added.
Mehbooba said it was part of Agenda of Alliance between the PDP and BJP that these routes should be opened, dialogue should be restarted and situation should improve. The J&K chief minister said that her father Mufti Sayeed’s decision to ally with BJP was not taken out of personal greed but to retrieve the state from its situation.
“You should walk with your head held high. The decision to ally with the BJP was taken only to take out Jammu and Kashmir from the morass. There was no greed in it,” she told party workers.
Addressing the gathering, Hussain said his father worked for betterment of the state with a passion till his last breath.
“As a cinematographer, I have woken up at 3 am in cold places like Ladakh to catch the first ray of Sunrise. It is passion. It was the same passion with which Mufti Mohd Sayeed worked for Kashmir that till his last day he was working in extreme cold,” he said.
Sharing his ideas about development, the PDP candidate told the workers that if going against the nature and constructing concrete everywhere is their idea of development, he was not the right person for them.
“Development is when best education is imparted in Government schools, when our government hospitals come to a level that best treatment is available there, that is development.
“Roads and buildings will be built anyway but when those working on these projects treat their work is worship then we will have development,” he said.
