Reach out to people through substantive political, economic measures: Mehbooba to Centre

“The prevailing painful situation in Kashmir necessitates reaching out to all shades of the political opinion in the State and initiating substantive political and economic measures to revive and consolidate the peace and resolution process,” the Chief Minister said while addressing a public gathering after inaugurating the State’s biggest Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) at Bhagwati Nagar here.

The Chief Minister said that the political leadership in New Delhi and within the State must jointly work towards initiating the confidence building measures to respond to the people’s innermost yearning for peace with dignity. 

“The renewed trust people of the State have time and again reposed in the democratic institutions, offers an opportunity to work through peaceful and reconciliatory means towards addressing all the dimensions of the Kashmir issue.," she said.

Maintaining that violence in any form only brings miseries to the people and is not a medium to seek resolution of problems, Mehbooba reiterated that solutions can only be found through democratic and political means involving engagement and dialogue.

The Chief Minister said that all people will also have to give peace and reconciliation process a chance to take shape as had happened between 2002 and 2003.

“Our children are today getting killed or maimed, our social fabric is slipping into disorder, economy is in shambles, educational sector has suffered immensely, tourism inflow is zero, shopkeepers are not able to do business, industrial units are shut, development process has come to a halt and people are feeling suffocated," Mufti said.

Urging the Centre not to see all Kashmiris through the security prism, the Chief Minister said: “I want to make an appeal to the Centre that do not see all the people of Kashmir with same eye.”

She said Kashmiris are peace loving people and they don’t like violence.

“They (Kashmiris) are not stone-pelters, they are peace loving people.," said she.

The Chief Minister said three militants were killed in a gun battle and it was nothing new as encounters and killing of militants was going on in Kashmir since the eruption of militancy in early nineties.

“But section of people got an opportunity to rake up the issue and put peaceful Kashmir on boil,” she said and added that it was tragic to note that not only have got scores of youth got killed in this senseless violence but it has also forced thousands of people to flee from Kashmir to safeguard the future of their children.