Mehbooba Mufti, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, India, has suggested that there should be a dialogue process internally and externally with Pakistan in order to defuse heightened tensions between India and Pakistan raised by a suicide bombing attack – Pulwama terror attack – last month in Kashmir on CRPF personnel.
According to Reuters news reports, ex-CM Mufti, a former ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said an ongoing crackdown over militants and those harbouring secession could further alienate the people. India has vowed to kill each and every militant in the nation’s Pakistan-occupied region if they refused to give up their armouries.
In an interview on Friday, Mufti said, “I strongly feel that there has to be a dialogue process internally as well as externally, with Pakistan,” adding, “The situation is going to get worse if some kind of political process is not initiated on the ground now.”
India has repeatedly ruled out dialogues with Islamabad unless it acts on terror outfits operating from Pakistani soil.
Indian foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale, on the day of the strike, said it had killed Jaish-e-Mohammed terror organizations’ camps in the region of Balakot.
Mufti said, “This confrontational attitude – no talks, no discussion -has an impact. Whatever relationship we have with Pakistan, it has a direct impact on Jammu and Kashmir and we are the worst sufferers of this animosity.”
“Once you start choking the space for dissent in a democracy, people feel pushed to the wall and then it leads to further dissent and alienation,” she said.