Marh (Jammu), Feb 3: Welcoming prompt follow-up action on the Justice Verma committee report on crimes against women, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) patron Mufti Muhammad Sayeed Sunday regretted the government response to recommendations on AFSPA.
 “This is clearly a case of double-standards and reflects poorly on our national resolve to uphold women’s dignity and rights without discrimination, which got a resounding expression recently in the wake of Delhi gang-rape”, Mufti said, while addressing a public meeting here today.
 He was of the opinion that Justice Verma’s recommendations on bringing crimes against women universally under the jurisdiction of civil courts was a welcome voice and it could become the first step towards revocation of AFSPA which was introduced in totally different circumstances.
 He said it was unfortunate that the Union Cabinet did not even discuss the recommendations regarding AFSPA, which sends out a highly negative signal to people of J&K and other states covered by it.
 Stressing that AFSPA could not be a permanent feature of governance, Mufti said such laws were meant only for exceptional situations which no more exist in J&K. “Denial of the right to legal redressal is the antithesis of our great constitution and people of J&K who have enthusiastically been participating in all democratic processes cannot be kept on margins anymore for any reason”.
 He said institutional redressal was the best antidote to alienation and having suffered a big deficit on this account in the past the state needs fast tracking of political process to bring it at par with rest of the country. "In that context the decision to ignore the Verma panel recommendations could prove counter productive" he added.
 Taking a dig at National Conference led coalition regime for its failure to fulfill its promise of revoking AFSFA for the last four years, Mufti said that PDP had never compromised its agenda for the sake of the power.
 Dr Sameer Kaul, Thakur Balbir Singh, Ved Mahajan, Jagjeet Singh Jagga, Thakur Suram Singh, Vikram Singh, Rajinder Singh Manhas, Chaman Manyal, Som Nath, Parbhakar Singh, Mohinder Kour, Suresh Sharma, Mohammad Shafi, Gopal Sharma, Ashok Sharma, K K Sharma, Suman Sharma, Ashok Bhat, Bhushan Sharma, Billa Ram and others also addressed the meeting.
 In the meeting Vijay Kumar Sharma, Sarpanch of Marh joined PDP along with other Panchayat members namely Kuldeep Singh, Sham Singh, Jagat Singh, Jagdish Raj, Pawan Gupta, Bhaderwahi, Mohit Gupta, B L Verma and others.

Lastupdate on : Sun, 3 Feb 2013 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 3 Feb 2013 18:30:00 GMT
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