Srinagar: A partial to complete shutdown is being observed in Kashmir Valley in protest against alleged attacks on Kashmiri students studying in various colleges and universities across the country.
Shops and other businesses in summer capital Srinagar and most other parts of the Valley are closed whereas only skeleton transport services are plying on the roads. Educational institutions also remain closed in Srinagar and elsewhere.
The attendance recorded in government offices, banks and other financial institutions on Tuesday morning was thin and the authorities attributed it to the non-availability of public transport. Reinforcements from J&K police and CRPF are guarding the otherwise deserted streets and marketplaces in Srinagar.
However, in some pockets, the strike call issued by various separatist organizations and endorsed by trade and social groups and Kashmir bar council have evoked feeble response. Private cars and auto-rickshaws were plying in Srinagar areas.
The strike call was issued following reports about a series of alleged attacks on Kashmiri students in various universities and colleges outside the Valley started pouring in against a backdrop of disturbances on the campus of Srinagar’s National Institute of Technology (NIT) earlier this month. Earlier also, Kashmiri students were allegedly harassed and even attacked during the row over the Afzal Guru event at Delhi’s JNU and following ICC Twety-20 matches played in Eden Garden, Kolkata and Mohali.
Nine students and a hostel warden from Kashmir were arrested following a clash in the hostel mess of a private university in Rajasthan's Chittorgarh district over Indian cricket team's loss against West Indies in the T20 World Cup semi-final.
The Mewar University had said it suspended these students after being released on bail along with seven others for creating nuisance on the varsity premises on March 31. The Kashmiri students came under alleged attacks also in some parts of Jammu and elsewhere.
Harassment of Kashmiri students by state and non-state actors in Delhi and elsewhere in the country has been widely resented in their home state with various political, social and student organisations asking the BJP government at the Centre and the state governments to ensure their safety and initiate action under law against those involved in alleged misdemeanour.
Former Chief Minister and working president of opposition National Conference (NC), Omar Abdullah, recently while expressing resentment against ‘blanket stereotyping and maligning’ of Kashmiri students demand that the Government of India desists from ruining their careers for the benefit of political expediency”. He said that harassment of Kashmiri students in Delhi was unacceptable and cautioned against making them “convenient scapegoats” in the JNU issue.
Abdullah had also said, “There have been numerous instances in the past when the Delhi Police has cited ‘intelligence inputs’ to falsely implicate young Kashmiris only to be acquitted by the courts after years of incarceration. We express our resentment against this blanket stereotyping and maligning of Kashmiri students and demand that the Government of India desists from ruining their careers for the benefit of political expediency”.
Separatist Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik while issuing the call for protest shutdown at a press conference here last week said that the Kashmiri students are being beaten, harassed and intimidated at various places outside the Valley and the authorities have turned a blind eye on it. He alleged, “No day passes when Kashmiri students are not being beaten, harassed, intimidated and bullied in India and this phenomenon has taken a very ugly colour now. Students who are busy in their studies and are trying to make their futures are being made scapegoat for pity political interests.”
Last month, following complaints that Kashmiri students are being harassed in various states particularly Delhi, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued an advisory to all state governments and their police chiefs to ensure their protection.
It asked all the chief secretaries and DGPs to ensure safety of the Kashmiri youth studying in their respective states and identify a designated police officer in their state to whom any such complaint of harassment could be directly conveyed for ensuring timely action. This came after J&K Governor N.N. Vohra’s raised the issue with the MHA.
The Delhi Police has nominated Taj Hasan, Special Commissioner of Police (Crime), and assigned him the responsibility of personally dealing with any complaint or problem faced by any J&K student studying in the Union capital.
Meanwhile, Abdullah on Tuesday took a jibe at Union Minister Venkaia Naidu for his concern over NIT Srinagar issue. Responding to a tweet of Naidu in which he had said “Prabhu Chawla ji… What happened in NIT Srinagar is totally unacceptable… I pity pseudo-secularists for their silence on it..”, the NC leader wrote on micro-blogging site Twitter.com, “But your CM in J&K called #NIT a “non-issue” so does that make her a double pseudo-secularist?”
