Family-based parties including PDP and NC failed nation on J&K: Jaitley

New Delhi, Mar 28 :The BJP on Thursday said the country is ‘disappointed’ with three family-based mainstream parties as they always played ‘ifs and buts’ game while condemning terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.
“Being soft in criticising separatism does no good. It is for this reason that their own space has shrunk. This is the country’s disappointment with them,” senior BJP leader and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in a Facebook blog.
In reference to organistions such as Jamaat-e-Islami, Mr Jaitley said, “You cannot advocate a break away from India and expect India to secure you.”
He said the successive governments at the Centre have always desired that despite political differences they must allow “more space to the mainstream parties” in the Valley so that the separatist space is shrunk.
“Three families, since 1947, dominated that mainstream space. Two of them are based out of Srinagar and one in New Delhi. Regrettably, they let down the people of the state. The two major mainstream parties, even when they condemned terrorism, it was always with ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’,” he said without taking names but making obvious reference to National Conference of Abdullahas, People’s Democratic Party of the Mufti family and the Congress.
Mr Jaitley further said, “It is only their absolute distancing from separatism, violence and terrorism that can create an alternative space.”
The Minister said incumbent Modi government and the state administration under the President’s Rule have decided that the rule of law in the interest of the people of Valley and the larger interest of India, “must equally apply to the state of Jammu & Kashmir.”
He said: “The Jamaat-e-Islami, in the last several years, has indulged in ideological indoctrination which provided the manpower resource for separatism. It transformed the Valley from the liberal land of ‘Sufism’ to hardcore ‘Wahhabism’.”
Asserting that this has led the administration ban the organization and thus hundreds of its activists have been arrested. Its offices have been sealed. Its activities have been significantly curtailed.
“The Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which was working over-ground, has also been banned. Several of its people have been arrested. Separatists and Hurriyat leaders, as also several undeserving cases numbering in hundreds, have had their security withdrawn,” he added.