Cricket has been the centre of NIT Srinagar controversy for almost over two weeks and still continuing. On the contrary it faced the wrath of Court in Marthwada region of Maharashtra for the prevailing draught. Water and cricket has taken the controversy to a new height and threatened the staging of the game’s high-money entrainment version Indian Primer League (IPL). It is not the cricket but the flawed agricultural policies of the Centre and state governments which should be blamed for such an impasse. Where as in Kashmir it was not the first time that sentiments have gone anti-India. This has been there and will always remain against New Delhi. If memory goes first international cricket was staged in 1983 in Srinagar when India hosted West Indies, even then Kashmiri spectators cheered for visitors and few of them tried to dig up the pitch to get international attention. What baffles one is, when the NIT issue was dying, the emergence of yesteryear Bollywood actor Anupam Kher emerging at Srinagar Airport carrying National Flag, a gift for the outstation students according to him. Over 150 students having affiliations to BJP were stopped at Lakhanpur, the entry point of Jammu and Kashmir, who were trying to reach Srinagar to express solidarity with strife-stricken students. Once again Deputy Chief Minister was caught on the wrong foot when he out-rightly denied BJP was planning ‘NIT Chalo March’. With all these explanations it looks now BJP is trying to wash its hands off the incidents and in reality it is not. The unwinding of events shows that the party is planning something big for which it is not cricket but politics in crude form-reeking of vengeance to maintain pressure on the coalition.
