Srinagar, July 7: Reacting sharply to the deployment of Army in Srinagar, Peoples Democratic Party today said the move is fraught with danger and adds to the long list of negative signals emanating from the government.
In a statement here a PDP spokesman said the party leadership met here this afternoon to take stock of the “highly disturbed situation” in the valley caused by killing of a large number of teenagers in security forces actions.
The meeting was presided over by the party patron Mufti Muhammad Sayeed and attended besides President Mehbooba Mufti by senior leaders, Muzaffar Hussain Baig, Moulvi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari, Abdul Aziz Zargar, Muhammad Dilawar Mir and Tariq Hameed Karra.
The spokesman said the leaders expressed concern over the “inability” of the government to perform its fundamental duty  to protect the lives of the citizens. Having failed on this crucial and other fronts of governance it had virtually abdicated its responsibility as a democratic institution by seeking army assistance, he said.
 It was, according to the spokesman, the general view at the meeting that the government had bungled the situation all through the turbulence sparked primarily by brutal use of force that unfortunately targeted youth of a particular age group. Instead of trying to address the cause of anger and taking action against perpetrators the government only attempted damage control to restrict its fall out on the “image” of the government without bothering for the precious young lives he added.
Along with this the government adopted the strategy of demonizing the youth, calling them agents and attributing  monetary and other motivations to a genuine and peaceful expression of sentiment the spokesman said and added it was  unfortunate that lessons were still not learnt. This he said is evident from the deployment of a reluctant army in the capital city just to convey an impression of a functional though helpless government. He said it was ironical that the state government had requisitioned army to fight unarmed citizens at a time when in other states a consensus had been arrived not to use defence forces even against highly armed and trained fighters.
He said the meeting pointed out that such life saving methods have extremely dangerous contraindications which the government should have considered properly. The leaders reiterated the party view that less force and not more was the solution out of the crisis, which unfortunately seems to be against the thought process of an insecure and unsure dispensation faced with the consequences of 18 months of continued denial of ground realities.
Expressing deep grief at the loss of young boys and a youthful girl at the hands of trigger happy security forces, the meeting said the tragedy of the families could not be described in words. The leaders hoped good sense would prevail on the government to stop the vicious circle of innocent killings.

Lastupdate on : Fri, 9 Jul 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Fri, 9 Jul 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:00:00 IST