NC’s MP targets Govt’s most powerful---Omar, Rana, Nasir, Vyas, Khoda

But Mr Rattanpuri spares Farooq, other oldies of his party; calls J&K a Police State

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Nov 29: In an unprecedented embarrassment for his party National Conference (NC) and Omar Abdullah-led coalition Government, broadcaster-turned-politician and Member of Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Rattanpuri, has called Jammu & Kashmir a ‘Police-run state’. It is for the first time in the last three years that someone, holding the position of a Member of Parliament, has not only raised fingers on functioning of the ruling party and its regime but has also bluntly targeted the state government’s most powerful---Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, Political Advisor to CM Devender Singh Rana, Minister of State Home Nasir Aslam Wani besides Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Bharat Bhushan Vyas and Director General of Police Kuldeep Khoda.

The in-house strife within the NC came to the fore when maverick Rattanpuri chose media proactively to make it public that unrest among the principal ruling party’s cadres was leading to disillusionment and discomfiture. It is still not a left, right and the centre offensive but Rattanpuri’s audacity in directly assailing Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his powerful coterie, that sent him to Parliament in 2009, is widely being perceived as meaningful. And the timing is no less significant: beginning of a judicial inquiry that could for the first time have a head of the government in the dock.

As if Omar Abdullah’s and his political and administrative coterie’s tribulation in Haji Yousuf episode was not enough, Rattanpuri timed his salvo with Justice (retired) H S Bedi’s arrival in Srinagar and a quick reaction from Chief Minister’s advisor Mubarak Gul suggested that it had hit the proverbial hornets’ nest in the top echelons of power. Remember that Rattanpuri is not Omar’s “most respected uncle” (Dr Mustafa Kamaal) whose escapades---impromptu or planned---could be condoned by Gupkar Road and Nawa-e-Subah.

Rattanpuri’s revolt is perceptibly sequel to the “humiliation” he faced at the hands of SP in his home district of Pulwama earlier this year. Shortly after Minister of Social Welfare Sakeena Itoo taught Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Afzal Bhat a lesson and got him removed from Pulwama when he declined to oblige her in certain ‘objectionable’ matters, NC’s MP declared his war on IPS officer Amit Kumar. Like Sakeena, Rattanpuri began to assert against the “impolite behaviour” of a Junior Engineer in PHE Department. Unlike DC, this time around it was SP who had the last laugh.

Months after the clash, Rattanpuri went public through a Srinagar-based newspaper followed by local news agency KNS. Even as men in the Government wasted time in digging call detail records between the NC’s MP and a senior leader of J&K Pradesh Congress Committee, the successful broadcaster-turned-failed politician bull-dozed straight into the CM’s turf. He told KNS that CM’s Political Advisor (Mr D S Rana) was providing patronage to arrogant and “anti-Kashmiri” officers in Police and civil administration.

Seeking to draw comparison, Rattanpuri pointed out that Government had lately fired two of the senior Police officers (SSP Basant Rath and SP Mubassir Latifi) on account of their “indecent language” against some Jammu-based politicians. But the same dispensation, according to him, chose to be a mute spectator to the Pulwama SP’s “public humiliation of an MP” and a spillover of insult on him from “the emboldened and unbridled” Police department. He went wild to allege that DGP Kuldeep Khoda was a man of “poor command and control” of his organisation. If Rattanpuri is to be believed, DGP recently supplied SPOs to thicken PDP patriarch Mufti Sayeed’s public meeting in Srinagar

According to the MP, J&K is a state fully ruled by Police and nobody, from a street boy to a sitting nationalist MP, carried any relevance. Everybody in Kashmir, he says, is “insecure”. NC cadres, including Ministers, according to him, are “disappointed and disillusioned”. Holding Rana responsible for the “growing unrest among Kashmiris”, Rattanpuri does not spare even his top boss.

“When I narrated things in detail in a Working Committee meeting and demanded an inquiry into discrimination (against the Kashmiris), CM’s Political Advisor took it upon himself and began to speak in defence. He was soon silenced by CM who began aggressively defending his aide. When I objected, CM silenced me with uncharitable phraseology. Though I have forgotten those bad moments, he hasn’t. He doesn’t see eye-to-eye with me”, Omar’s favourite for Assembly and Rajya Sabha elections said. He added that CM’s aides had spent “all of their ammunition” to make him uncomfortable in the party. He attributed it to “well designed discrimination”.

Having berated Chief Minister, his Political Advisor and DGP, Rattanpuri outstretched his anger to MoS Home Nasir Sogami, albeit without mentioning any names. “Those very people whose families conspired against Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and did the worst of treason, are now calling the shots in National Conference”, Rattanpuri said obviously to assail Wani who has grown closest among all politicians and Ministers to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. Wani’s legendary grandfather, Ghulam Nabi Wani Sogami, had sided with Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammad who rewarded him with induction as Minister of Forest after Sheikh’s dismissal and arrest in 1953.

Again, with an obvious reference to Chief Minister’s Principal Secretary, B B Vyas, Rattanpuri has complained that the all-important Department of Planning was “without a full-time head” for the last over a year. Mr Vyas has been simultaneously holding the charge of Principal Secretary of Planning and Development, Information, Estates, Civil Aviation, Hospitality & Protocol. Few of politicians and newspapers have been raising the issue of his being “overburdened” when they want to fire an effective missile on CM’s courtyard. Rattanpuri has not spared even this beaten track.

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