Hours after senior People’s Democratic Party leader Altaf Bukhari suggested a coalition between his party and National Conference for government formation in Jammu and Kashmir, a rebel PDP legislator Abid Hussain Ansari launched a scathing attack on Bukhari saying he was living in a “wonderland” and must get his “sense of arithmetic checked before daydreaming.”
“He (Bukhari) is living in a wonderland cut away from the realm of reality. He should get his sense of arithmetic checked before daydreaming under fig-leaf of a moral stand that belies PDP’s U-turns vis-a-vis its alliance with the BJP,” Ansari said in a hard-hitting statement.
Ansari said that while Bukhari has a democratic right to “daydream” about alliances and “live in a delusion”, he should know that more than 15 MLAs of his party are “in constant touch (with rebels) and won’t allow people like him to enact yet another farce with people of Kashmir.”
“For Bukhari to assume that the PDP can be the architect of yet another fraud and that people would tolerate such a fraud speaks volumes about his disconnect with the ground reality,” Ansari said.
He said that the PDP has “shamelessly changed its tune vis-a-vis BJP depending on their being in power or thrown out of power unceremoniously”.
Ansari said when the PDP campaigned for the 2014 Assembly elections they portrayed the BJP as a “monster ready to devour Kashmir” and its rhetoric “revolved around its promises of not allowing BJP to come to power in J&K.”
Immediately after the elections, Ansari said the PDP leadership allied with the BJP and “sold” their decision as the one “taken in the best interests” of the state.
“For people like Bukhari and the PDP leadership of Mufti family, the BJP is communal and dangerous when the PDP is out of power and noble and progressive when it is in an alliance with them. The people of Kashmir have had enough and have no tolerance or appetite for this utter nonsense and rank opportunism anymore,” Ansari said.
“It is hilarious and astounding that the PDP and Bukhari are now portraying themselves to be belated saviors of Article 35-A. When the legal petitions were filed challenging Article 35-A in the Supreme Court, the same people and the PDP leadership were so busy in nepotism and clandestine negotiations with power companies for kickbacks that they forgot to even file the requisite affidavits in the court of law,” Ansari alleged in the statement.
He said Bukhari and the PDP should understand that Article 35-A was sacred and non-negotiable for every citizen of the state and people won’t allow a compromise on it.
“They don’t need the PDP’s fake sympathy to defend it. The challenge to Article 35-A is a legal challenge mounted in the court of law and it will be defended in the court of law without any compromises. People like Bukhari and the PDP should beware that any attempt to hide their own political opportunism behind smokescreens would have no takers,” said Ansari, the MLA from Zadibal.
“Now, since all his grand proposals have been rejected by the BJP with ridicule and disdain, he is now donning the avatar of the last defender of Article 35A in Kashmir,” said Ansari. “Now he suddenly wants to wage a war against communalism that he suddenly sees within the BJP. Give people of Kashmir a break – they have had enough of these dramas.”