Everything has gone back many years

Mehbooba Mufti: I would like to begin by explaining our stand on the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) controversy. When Mufti Mohammed Sayeed (Mehbooba’s father) was chief minister of the coalition government in J&K, General S K Sinha arrived as Governor in 2003. Until then, nobody really took notice of the SASB. But with him on the scene, SASB became commercialised — everyone, the ponywallah, the shawlwallah, or the kheriwallah was charged a registration fee. This led to resentment as people felt that something which belonged to them was no longer theirs.

As a child, I remember everybody used to wait for the yatra, even children would sometimes help to carry things. Suddenly, things changed with General Sinha: he sent a proposal to Mufti saab, asking for some hundred kanals of land. He wanted to extend the yatra period to two months. But the administration of the two districts gets totally involved in the yatra and the security forces are taxed, so Mufti saab tried to put down his foot. Unfortunately, the Congress played politics — ministers from Jammu threatened to resign. The Central Government intervened and finally Mufti saab agreed to extend the yatra to 45 days. That’s where the controversy began.

The SASB went to court. Interestingly, even though all cases related to Kashmir division are supposed to be heard in the Kashmir court, this was transferred to Jammu. And the lawyer who was defending the SASB became the judge. Every consideration was ignored and the SASB got an order in their favour. We filed a plea against it, but after the transfer of power to the Congress, General Sinha started acting as a parallel power centre. He pursued the land case.

... contd.