“I say today with authority and I will be criticised for it also. If anyone can find a solution to Jammu and Kashmir problem, it is Prime Minister Narendra Modi.” Mehbooba Mufti said it in May 2017 when she was Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister.
The PDP and the BJP had entered into an alliance in 2015 after the elections threw up a hung Assembly. However, the coalition could not complete its term, with the alliance ending in June 2018.
“If anyone can take us out of the sticky spot, it is Prime Minister Modi. The nation will support whatever he decides…it is my earnest appeal…,” she had said while addressing a gathering after inaugurating a flyover in Jammu.
Although Mufti had said these words in a different context, in an ironic twist of fate, Modi has indeed “found a solution” to Kashmir, but perhaps not quite the one the PDP leader had in mind.
The Centre on Monday, instead, put forward a proposal to make Jammu and Kashmir a Union Territory with a Legislature. The BJP-led government at the Centre has also scrapped Article 370 of the Constitution which grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir.
Mufti in her 2017 speech also praised Modi for visiting Lahore in December 2015. She said that as Modi had got a decisive mandate in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he had the power to find a solution to the Kashmir issue.
On Monday, however, Mufti said that the people of Jammu & Kashmir had been “betrayed”. In a message on Twitter, she said: “Today the people of Jammu & Kashmir who reposed their faith in institutions of India like parliament & Supreme Court feel defeated & betrayed. By dismembering the state & fraudulently taking away what is rightfully & legally ours, they have further complicated the Kashmir dispute.”
