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Terrorist influx has doubled, says Azad New Delhi, November 19 In a special interview to The Tribune here, he said although there had been some decline in the attempt to smuggle in militants during the past two months, overall the number of infiltrators was exceptionally high. He urged Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to live up to the pledges he had been making to the world community on eschewing terrorism. The Chief Minister regretted that the Hurriyat Conference had been keeping away from the political process and had even boycotted the working groups formed to discus the state’s constitutional and economic future. Yet, he would not like to close the door on the Hurriyat. It had some bright young faces who could play a great role in nation-building, he said. His hope was that at least their supporters would see reason and persuade them to have a rethinking in the days to come. Mr Azad claimed that there had been a marked improvement in the human rights situation in the state under his stewardship, with the custodial deaths and custodial disappearances being the lowest in 17 years. He also asserted that the accidental killings of civilians at the hands of security forces were at the lowest. Subsequently, complaints lodged by independent organisations to the National Human Rights Commission and the SHRC were also at the lowest in 17 years. Cases of alleged rape and molestation too were almost negligible. This was the biggest achievement of his first year in office, he claimed. Interestingly, his assessment is diametrically opposite to that of the National Conference, which has pulled out of the five working groups, alleging that instead of a healing touch, the government was delivering a “killing touch”. While his goal was that there should not be even a single case of human rights violation in the state, he pointed out that whereas civilians were mostly killed accidentally at the hands of security forces, which were targeted day and night by terrorists, the militants killed civilians as well as security men deliberately. Unfortunately, the daily killing of security men, always in the line of fire to save the life and property of the common men, did not make international news. He differed with the viewpoint of some Kashmir watchers that by appointing working groups on various ticklish issues such as Centre-state relations, the Centre and the state had tried to pass the buck to non-elected persons. It was very important to formulate an agenda in consultation with all political parties which took part in the roundtable conference with the Prime Minister and that could only be done by the working groups, he asserted. While other groups had started working soon after the declaration was made in May, the working group on Centre-state relations and autonomy - about the most important of them all - was a non-starter because even a head had not been appointed. While former Chief Justice A.M. Ahmadi reportedly wanted that the group be granted the status of a government commission, former Ambassador to the US Abid Hussain had many prior commitments to be able to chair the working group. At long last, Justice Sagir Ahmad, a former Judge of the Supreme Court, has been appointed chairman of the working group now. When asked what sort of set-up he personally wanted for Jammu and Kashmir, Mr Azad said that all parties should refrain from expressing their views in public and should, instead, speak out only before the working group, so that there was no chance of “battlelines being drawn and an attempt at political one-upmanship”.He wanted the Hurriyat to join the working groups because “merely visiting foreign countries and meeting President Musharraf or Pakistani Foreign Secretary in Delhi won’t solve the Kashmir problem”. He dismissed the controversy that arose between him and the PDP over the removal of Deputy Chief Minister Muzaffer Beigh as a closed chapter but did remark that there were “unique challenges” involved in functioning with regional parties “whether at the Centre or in the states” On Afzal Guru, his stand was that he had not sought clemency for the 2001 Parliament attack case convict sentenced to death by the Supreme Court. He had only informed the Prime Minister of two agitations in the state, one for increasing the number of Haj pilgrims and the second against Afzal’s hanging. Bringing back Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley remained on top of his agenda. But they didn’t want to come till there was cessation of violence and the situation was not ripe for such an idyllic condition because of the mischief of the neighbouring country. Mr Azad underlined the fact that since corruption and administrative lethargy had been the bane of the state, he had introduced anti-defection law and restricted the size of the Council of Ministers to 24 through a special session within one month of taking over as Chief Minister. Working hours in the Secretariat had been increased by two and a half hours per week. Since the state was snowbound for nearly half a year, it had introduced double shift system - the first in the country to do so. It was also the first state in the world to enact a piece of legislation under which properties of public servants disproportionate to their known sources of income would belong to the state government.
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