Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today expressed "profound" grief and agony over the death of youths during protests in the Valley and asked security forces to avoid use of disproportionate force for crowd control besides urging people for calm.
"I express profound grief over the tragic death of the youths and extend my heart-felt condolences to the bereaved family members in their hour of immense grief," she said in a statement issued here.
Mehbooba said disproportionate use of force for crowd control results in loss of precious lives and grave injuries which should be avoided at all costs.
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She asked the police and the paramilitary forces to use Standard Operational Procedure (SOP) while dealing with protesters to avoid loss of precious human lives or injuries.
Urging for calm, Mehbooba sought people's cooperation in restoration of normalcy in the Valley.
Violence only brings miseries to the people and tragedies for the victim families, she said and appealed people, especially the youth not to fall prey to the machinations of the vested interests, who play politics over the dead bodies of Kashmiris.
She also prayed for early recovery of the injured including civilians and the police personnel and asked health authorities to provide best possible treatment to them.
Mehbooba said the people of Jammu and Kashmir have lots
of problems and the issue has various complications.
"If you talk of the government, our government is in such a critical situation that in 62 days there was strike for 45 days; schools were shuts, shops were closed and stones were pelted...It was a very tough phase in which various departments of our government did a wonderful job," she said.
While targeting the Opposition for saying that the government has failed, the Chief Minister said it was easy to level allegations.
"It is easy to say government has failed, but in such a critical situation the government fulfilled its responsibility. Our fight was not against gun-yielding militants but youth of 14 to 17 years of age who were made to pitch against us.
"If an elderly person has to go for dialysis; if a lady has to go for a delivery and after leaving their house they are not afraid of the police, CRPF or Army, but of the stone- carrying young boys," Mehbooba said.
She thanked the people of Kashmir for letting the Amarnath Yatra pass off peacefully.
She said National Conference which once enjoyed two-third majority in the state assembly could not resolve the Kashmir issue.
"If anything positive happened, it was during Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's tenure which was fully supported by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. There was ceasefire and borders were peaceful from 2003 to 2008 and General Musharraf was also going in the right direction," she claimed.
Mehbooba said the UPA government could not take the initiative forward and the National Conference and Congress government in the state also failed to carry on with the initiatives started by her late father.
"Mufti Mohammed Sayeed had shown the way that we cannot erase the borders but make them irrelevant- let our children go to other side and their's come to us and see how we have developed and how they have. How many medical, engineering colleges we have and how many they have," she said.
While appreciating Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his "bold step" of travelling to Lahore to attend the marriage ceremony of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's grand daughter, Mehbooba said the "peace initiative" faced a setback after the Pathankot attack.
