Mufti can resolve Kashmir issue if he gets a free hand: Sharad Yadav

Jammu: If given a "free hand" to run his government, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed will succeed in resolving the long pending Kashmir issue, Janata Dal(U) President Sharad Yadav said on Sunday.

Yadav, who met his former Janata Dal colleague Sayeed over lunch in Jammu yesterday, said that the PDP leader was a "nationalist who has lived for this country and would die for this country".

"I know Mufti Mohammed Sayeed personally for very long, he is a capable person and I am confident that if given a free hand to work, he would find a way out of this (Kashmir) problem," the JD(U) leader told PTI.

Yadav flew to Jammu from New Delhi yesterday on the invitation of Sayeed, whose party PDP is in alliance with BJP in Jammu and Kashmir, but said that he did not discuss politics during the meeting.

The meeting between the two leaders, who were both ministers in the Janata Dal government in 1989, came amid a unification move by Janata Parivar splinter groups.

"It was a long overdue meeting, so I decided that before Parliament session resumes, I must pay him a visit.

We have been together in the Union cabinet and I know him very well. It was just an apolitical meeting where we discussed everything else except politics," Yadav said.

Yadav said that the "democratic setup of India" was a platform that provides solution to every long-standing problem and that Kashmir issue too could be resolved within the framework of the democratic process.

He said he was confident that the BJP-PDP coalition government will facilitate and help initiate a sustained and meaningful dialogue with all internal stakeholders, which will include all political groups.

He said that the successive governments have been dealing with the separatist organisations.

"When I was a minister in the NDA government, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had initiated dialogue process with political groups, including the Hurriyat conference in the spirit of Insaaniyat, Kashmiriyat and Jamhooriyat," he said.

Yadav stated that opposition parties got united to make sure that these bills were not passed, but for the sake of the growth of the country the parties extended cooperation to the government.

"We extended cooperation for the sake of growth in the country albeit we were not satisfied with the clauses of the bills," he said.

Yadav noted that while the opposition was against the Land Acquisition Bill, the government again promulgated it in the form of an ordinance.

"This bill is completely against agriculture and farmers on which 70 per cent of our population depends. I coordinated the march towards President's House from Parliament House to oppose this bill," he said.

He said that they were in favour of Land Acquisition Bill 2013 that was passed after due consultation with all the political parties including the BJP.

"The government is not worried about farmers or improvement of agriculture. They are busy in bringing down the fiscal deficit by pleasing big business houses.

"The contribution of agriculture to our GDP has been declining tremendously as it was once upon a time at 35 per cent of the GDP which has come down to only 13 per cent now," Yadav said.

The JD(U) leader complained that when the bills will be enacted, "small enterprises in the country would not be able to sustain their business". "How will they compete with big corporate houses?" he asked.

Yadav said that the corporate houses were running on bank loans, "That is why non-performing assets have reached nearly around Rs 3 lakh crores and the government has not brought the names of these business houses in public domain so far," he added.