SRINAGAR: Indian police fired bullets and tear gas yesterday to quell thousands of stone-throwing Muslim demonstrators across Kashmir as anger grew over the transfer of forestland to a Hindu shrine trust.
Scores of people including chief of the separatist Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Mohammad Yasin Malik, were hurt when protesters clashed with police in the heart of Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital.
The state last evening plunged into further crisis after the alliance partner, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) pulled out of the Congress-led coalition in the state.
“Today a meeting of our senior ministers and legislators was held where it was decided that in the prevailing circumstances the PDP could not continue in the government. All our ministers have tendered resignations to the chief minister and a letter of withdrawal of support to the coalition government has been sent to the state governor,” PDP President Mehbooba Mufti told newsmen.
“We had given a deadline to the chief minister to rescind the controversial land allotment to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board. From his attitude it appears that the chief minister was in no mood to address the aspiration of the people in this regard,” Mehbooba said.
The decision to withdraw the support was taken at a meeting of PDP executive committee held under the chairmanship of Mehbooba Mufti, the party president and MP.
The weeklong protests started when authorities transferred nearly 100 acres of forestland in Kashmir to Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB), a Hindu trust, to erect temporary shelters for thousands of Hindu pilgrims who annually trek to a cave shrine in the Kashmir mountains.
There were indications yesterday that the unrest could spread beyond protests against the shrine. “The issue does not stop there,” said Mirwaiz Omer Farooq, head of the moderate faction All Parties Hurriyat Conference. “There are thousands of acres of land occupied by the Indian Army that also needs be addressed.”
Syed Ali Shah Geelani, leader of a hard-line separatist group, vowed that “our struggle will continue till we get our everything back.”
Protests yesterday by thousands of demonstrators in Srinagar, the largest city in the region, kept traffic and pedestrians off the roads and shut businesses and schools.
The protesters chanted anti-Indian slogans, threw rocks at police officers and damaged at least two police stations in Srinagar, while authorities sprayed tear gas and fired into the air in attempts to quell the demonstrations.
“The present situation reminds me of 1990, it is all disturbing,” Omar Abdullah, chief of Kashmir’s main opposition, the National Conference party, said. In the early 1990s, tens of thousands took to streets across the region demanding Kashmir’s cessation from India.
Hundreds have been hurt in clashes. Protesters say the land transfer was aimed at changing the demography of Kashmir, mainly Hindu India’s Muslim-majority region. Environmentalists say any construction on forestland could ruin the region’s fragile ecology. Indian authorities have denied the charge.
JKLF, which declared a cease-fire in 1994 against Indian troops, is an influential separatist group and says it is fighting for Kashmir’s complete freedom both from India and Pakistan. Shops, businesses, schools and colleges remained closed in Kashmir for the sixth day yesterday to protest the land move. “Indians go back, return our land,” the protesters shouted.
