Half measures wont do, says PDP
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29/06/2008
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Indian Express (New Delhi)
A day after withdrawing support to the Congress in J-K, the PDP on Sunday said the reported decision of the state Government to take charge of the logistics arrangements of the Amarnath yatra was only a half-way measure which would not help in resolving the grave situation that had engulfed the state. The statement came after a party meeting presided over by its president Mehbooba Mufti here. A party spokesman said the meeting observed that the PDP had, from the very beginning, maintained that the problem surrounding the diversion of land to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) needed a two-pronged solution involving both revocation of the controversial land diversion order and taking over of the arrangements of the yatra by the state Government as was done before the constitution of the SASB. "The more the Government dithers, the more dangerous the situation will become,' the PDP said. It said the recurrent ambiguity in Government decisions is only adding to the confusion instead of solving the present crisis. The meeting observed that Governor N N Vohra must take charge of the situation and use his administrative and political acumen to manage the dangerously evolving situation in the state so that efforts made by all sections of the society for peace do not go waste. The meeting paid tributes to the people of the state for maintaining amity and brotherhood by helping yatris in the smooth performance of the annual pilgrimage. Meanwhile, the Kashmir valley remained tense but there were no reports of violence. In the past one week, four persons have died and about a thousand injured in the Valley in violent protests, demanding revocation of the land transfer order. Both factions of the Hurriyat and the Action Committee against Land Transfer on Sunday rejected Chief Minister's Ghulam Nabi Azad's statement about the J-K Government taking over the yatra arrangements. Soon after Azad's statement, the two Hurriyat factions and the action committee said the peaceful protest would continue till the land transfer order was revoked. "The protests will stop only when we see a written revocation order of the forest land transfer to the Shrine Board,' chairman of hardline Hurriyat Conference Syed Ali Shah Geelani said. Chairman of the moderate Hurriyat Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who returned from Pakistan on Friday, on Sunday led a procession in the old city where he asked people not to get befooled by the state Government claims over the forest land issue.