Hurriyat may witness another split

A decade after Hurriyat Conference split into hardline and moderate factions, another division seems to be imminent within the moderate group led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.

On Thursday, convenor of moderate Hurriyat’s Pakistan chapter, Mehmood Saghar, stepped down from his post on the directions of senior separatist leader and executive member Shabir Ahmed Shah.

Sources told Deccan Herald that Shah was not happy with the working of the conglomerate as, according to him, it had “failed in giving a full-fledged democratic setup to the people.”

“There is no people-to-people contact on the ground. How can we achieve our goal,” Shah questioned.

However, Mirwaiz rejected Shah’s allegations saying Hurriyat will meet and take action against him.

 “Virtually, he is already out of Hurriyat as he has not attended meetings since a long time. If he (Shah) had any issue, he should have put those before the forum,” Mirwaiz told Deccan Herald.

“Forum politics has its own dynamics. You either go by consensus or majority. But Shah sahib never put anything before the forum,” he rued.

On Saghar’s resignation, Mirwaiz said Hurriyat’s executive council has already decided to replace him as the amalgam was already “in the process of re-structuring.”

Sources said Shah, along with few other moderate Hurriyat leaders, wants to toe the line of hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani regarding election boycott campaign.
“However, Mirwaiz and other senior moderate Hurriyat leaders Bilal Gani Lone, Prof Abdul Gani Bhat and Moulana Abass Ansari are not in favour of running election boycott campaign as was the policy of Hurriyat in the past,” sources said. They added that another reason for Shah to leave moderate Hurriyat is that he doesn’t want Mirwaiz to continue as a chairman.

“Shah has been demanding democratic setup in the moderate Hurriyat since last several years. He wanted triennial elections for choosing a chairman. This has become another reason for Shah to leave Hurriyat,” the sources claimed.

The Hurriyat Conference was formed on March 10, 1993 as a political front and an alliance of 26 political, social and religious organisations in Kashmir.

However, it got split after the 2002 Assembly elections, after some of its constituents allegedly participated in the Assembly elections, violating the conglomerate’s constitution.
DH News Service