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| Mirwaiz says no more Friday shutdown now on | | Kashmir’s clergy supports probe into ‘Wakf bungling’ | | AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Jul 3: In a significant development, Valley’s religious leadership has supported Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s decision of investigating financial irregularities in the Muslim Wakf Board allegedly committed by PDP-sponsored members of the religious body in the last five years. Chairman of the separatist Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, has, meanwhile, expressed concern over anarchical calls of shutdown in Kashmir valley and declared that, now on, there would be no Hartal on any Friday.
Kashmir head Mufti and one of the dismissed members of the Muslim Wakf Board (MWB), Mufti Bashir-ud-din, has supported Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s move of ordering an inquiry into the irregularities allegedly committed in recruitments, allotments, procurements and constructions made by the religious body in the last six years. The chief jurist, heading the Muslim court of decrees and settlement of disputes, has told a local news agency that inspite of his being a member of MWB, he had no knowledge of the appointments, allotments, procurements and constructions made in the last six years.
“I am happy that Chief Minister has constituted a three-member inquiry which would look into the omissions and commissions made in the last several years and expose the unscrupulous elements. I am going to provide full support to the committee so that those guilty of swindling the religious funding would be got identified and made accountable within 15 days”, Mufti is reported to have said.
Chairman of the separatist Hurriyat Conference, who also heads his political Awami Action Committee and the religious Anjuman-e-Nusratul Islam, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, has said that anybody found involved in the irregularities should be got punished. He has emphasized that the investigation should remain at a distance from politics as it was a matter of the custody of religious assets.
Yet another prominent cleric, Maulana Ghulam Rasool Hami has called for severe punishment to anybody found guilty of swindling the religious funds. He has expressed shock over the fact that the money collected from followers of the faith for upkeep and expansion of holy shrines and mosques had been misappropriated by unscrupulous elements.
As already reported, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, in his capacity as Chairman of MWB, had taken the first meeting of the reconstituted board yesterday and ordered an in-house inquiry into the alleged irregularities made in the religious body during the last several years. Government has terminated the tenure of all the members nominated by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s regime in 2004, excluding a retired college principal known for her loyalty to Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Meanwhile, sensing massive criticism to anarchical calls of shutdown, which have been pouring in from different outfits and alliances, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has declared today in his weekly address at the Friday afternoon prayers at Jamia Masjid that there would be no more hartal on any Friday from today. According to him, Government has been getting an excuse to besiege places of worship and enforce undeclared curfew so as to ensure that the Kashmiri Muslim religious leadership’s message did not reach the masses.
Mirwaiz has claimed that sparing Friday from shutdown was the “collective decision of the separatist leadership”. He has also beseeched the Valley’s political and religious leadership to see that the masses remained associated with the secessionist movement and they were not forced to crumble under the burden of every next day’s shutdown. Mirwaiz Umar’s announcement has come at a time when hundreds of families in downtown Srinagar have begun distress sale of their houses and shops and have been desperately shifting their residences to the peripheral localities, usually free of disturbance, clashes and demonstrations.
Justifying it as the “only tool of resistance”, Kashmir’s separatist leaders have enforced more than 3,000 days of shutdown in the Valley in the last 19 years of secessionist militancy. With the exception of Maulvi Abbas Ansari and JKLF C hairman, Yasin Malik, they have all settled themselves in posh outskirts of the capital city.
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