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| Farooq makes last ditch effort to redeem Valley | | | ABID SHAH
EARLY TIMES REPORT
NEW DELHI, July 10: Today's meeting of senior leader of National Conference and Union Minister Farooq Abdullah with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister P Chidambaram has come amid an uneasy situation in the Kashmir Valley. This mainly since multiple security forces stand guard in Srinagar and other towns of the Valley to ward off further trouble after days of stone pelting and violence.
There has been no official word after these high level meetings of Abdullah with the Prime Minister and Union Home Minister signifying the growing anguish at the tense situation where the agitated mobs have been taking to streets at the slightest opportunity to protest against what they think to be excessive use of force. This has led to recurring deaths through past two weeks of about a dozen youth who joined agitated mobs.
As one death in police firing has been leading to another in quick succession, they kicked off a chain of protests directing people's rage against the Centre and its paramilitary forces. This took place amid signs of lack of coordination between Centre's forces, mainly CRPF and Jammu and Kashmir Police. In the wake of this the initial instinct of the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has been to bring restraint to the CRPF through the Central Government's help.
Yet this kicked off differences between National Conference and Congress as also perceptions appeared to differ between State Government and the Centre. This was accentuated more because both Prime Minister and Union Home Minister were on visits abroad attending G-20 summit in Canada in the case of the first while the last was away attending SAARC countries Interior Ministers conference in Pakistan. This led to some delay in charting out a firm plan vis-à-vis tackling protests in the Valley.
The decision to bring in Army was mainly taken to have a multi-layered approach to contain protests where armymen could serve as a more disciplined and yet firm foil to the paramilitary forces and local police to bring a more orderly, saner and sobering effect upon State's civilian forces as also agitated sections among the citizenry.
This was thought after the State Government landed up in a difficult situation because of the quick manner in which deaths of stone pelting youth occurred giving the Government hardly anytime to put in place inquiries into these deaths, not to say to have some result from any of them. Thus, the protests, the police firing and the deaths brought by them remain a security issue. This is what bothers Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his father Farooq Abdullah more than other things where their priority is to bring some order to the Valley before it becomes too late for them to be left with any control over the troubled State where issues have of late been being decided between mobs and police.
It is in this backdrop that Farooq Abdullah went to North and South Blocks today to meet Chidambaram and Manmohan Singh on his return from London where he stopped while on his way back from New York to visit his ailing wife.
The senior Abdullah did not say anything after his today's meeting with Prime Minister and Home Minister and left for Srinagar with a grave face. Back home in the Valley, the veteran National Conference leader would obviously try to regain the ground lost by his party to separatists, courtesy the fierce protests observed at separatists' behest by the youth of the Valley. How far Farooq Abdullah succeeds in this mission is going to be keenly watched in New Delhi through the days to come.
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