National Conference has lashed out at M. Y. Tarigami over his baseless and motivated remarks about Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and has termed his allegations as attempts to please some invisible quarters who are plotting intrigues against J&K's identity, integrity and ethos. According to a statement issued, NC Spokesman Junaid Azim Mattu said that Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami owed his present political constituency and space in politics to National Conference and was otherwise a political non-entity who now tragically finds space and prominence in newspapers in proportions that are grossly disproportionate to his size and influence on the ground. "Before the 1996 Elections, Tarigami was a non-serious entity who found relevance in contesting elections for the sheer sake of it as his ideology was never and will never be in congruence with the history and ethos of this State. It was National Conference which ensured Tarigami's victory in 1996 by deciding to not file a candidate against him in a broader effort to evolve a consensus on taking the Valley out of the grip of turmoil", the NC Spokesman said.
Junaid Mattu said that Tarigami's remarks were surprising given the fact that Tarigami had praised the Omar Abdullah government at various forums in the recent past and had now suddenly, after the failure of his namesake "third front" decided to issue baseless statements to please new possible political patrons and bosses. The NC Spokesman said that Omar Abdullah had never remained silent on the 2010 killings but had ensured that legal action was necessitated in each and every case with FIRs registered and cases processed in the courts. In fact the Omar Abdullah government had constituted a CoI under Justice (Retd) Syed Bashir-ud-Din to probe the killings of 2010. Out of 78 FIRs registered into the deaths the charge-sheets and final reports were submitted for 76 cases before the competent courts.
Junaid Mattu said that Tarigami was not sure if he was in the opposition or in ruling coalitions over the last successive coalition governments and he, like his associates, shrewdly occupied a space somewhere in between to have the cake and eat it too. "Getting dead-wood political riff raff together and sewing a group of inpidual non-entities into a namesake front did not amount to politics but was an attempt to create a bargaining lobby that weighs it options and goes with the direction of the wind. There are those faces in Tarigami's third front today who have come from the quarters of BJP and its current allies and were earlier also directly and unabashedly affiliated to various unknown quarters and agencies. And their high moral talk about the aspirations and sentiment in Kashmir is not only ironic but also hypocritical. They neither have a mandate, nor the credibility to talk about the sacrifices and sentiments of our people", Mattu said.
The NC Spokesman said that the re-constitution of the CoI under Justice (Retd) M. L. Koul was a reiteration of Omar Abdullah's commitment to ensure that every single case is treated on the merits of justice and not a single case is hushed up. "Omar Abdullah has never changed his stand on the need for truth, justice and reconciliation and his efforts in those directions don't need certificates from Mr. Tarigami and those of his ilk whose political affiliations are as much under the ground as above it", the NC Spokesman said.