They are frustrated with the “bunch of lies” propagated on television channels on the “normal situation” in Jammu and Kashmir and are in Delhi to ‘bust’ the govt claims. One of them, Talib Hussain, a panchayat member from Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, said, “If the government bullets don't kill, starvation will.”
Mr. Hussain is accompanied by his friends, Iqbal Ahmed, another panchayat member, and Mumtaz Ahmed Khan, a former panchayat member who resigned recently from the post. All the three belong to the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Congress, body of panchayat members facing threats from militants that was formed in 2018. Mr. Hussain and Mr. Khan belong to the Bakharwala tribal community.
According to the three, most of the panchayat members, social and political activists are under detention. “The crackdown began on August 4 itself, with many of us getting polite calls from the police to come down to the station to discuss law and order. Only those of us who did not respond to the calls are free,” Mr. Khan said.
Mr. Hussain said that not a word of dissent was being tolerated. “The police is slapping PSA [Public Safety Act] like it's distributing toffees,” he alleged. There are no clear estimates as to how many panchayat members are currently in police custody as all communication lines are down. The three friends could plan to drive down to Delhi only because they live in neighbourhood villages and could walk to reach each other.
By 6 a.m. on August 5, hours before Home Minister Amit Shah revealed the government's intention to nullify Article 370 in the Rajya Sabha, the villages had been turned into prisons with announcements by police asking people not to step out of their houses.
The statistics that the government was pouring out to highlight the “normalcy” was a mere eyewash, they said. “The cities are better off. In villages, we are starved of even the most basic rations. Most of the provision stores are shut. Hospitals don't even have basic medicines like paracetamol. Heart patients do not have access to medicines and it is next to impossible to take pregnant women to hospitals in the absence of vehicles,” Mr. Iqbal Ahmed said. The situation in villages was particularly bad because for even to get curfew passes they have to reach the Collectors offices, which in case of a hilly terrain was no easy task.
ATMs were open only on Eid on August 12, but most of the rural population don’t have access to them. So they got Rs. 2000 a family withdrawals from the government. Mr. Ahmed joked that the government saved them from extravagant expenditure on the holiday. Fruit crops were rotting in villages in the absences of trucks to cart them out to Srinagar and Jammu.
“We stood and swore by the Indian Constitution and with this move they have made us irrelevant. We have no face to show. Our people are questioning us now on whether this is the Constitution that we were preaching about,” Mr. Ahmed said.
The only way to communicate with the government was through security forces. Government orders were conveyed through security forces, rations were being delivered by them and even instructions to send children to school came from the station house officer, the three men said.
“Nobody there is in a mood to listen to any authority. Kashmir is sitting on a tinder box. There are reports of villagers digging holes to ensure that Army vehicles don’t travel,” Mr. Hussain said.
