CPI(M) leader from Kashmir Mohammed Yusuf Tarigami.

ON A day a second batch of foreign envoys arrived in Srinagar to review the ground situation, senior CPI(M) leader from Kashmir Mohammed Yusuf Tarigami on Wednesday hit out at the government, asking it to notify Jammu and Kashmir as an open “central jail” so that it no longer has to enforce laws like the Public Safety Act (PSA) on its citizens. CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury called the envoy visits “stage managed”.

Addressing a press conference along with Tarigami, Yechury said Jammu and Kashmir was badly hit by the lock down which followed scrapping of Article 370 and bifurcation of the erstwhile state. Tourism, he said, was badly affected while agriculture and horticulture were severely hit. “The economy is suffering and livelihood conditions of the people are more miserable,” he said.

He said while the government boasts of normalcy in J&K, leaders and other sections of the people are intimidated and put behind the bars. “Being a popular leader and asking people to vote in elections is also seen as a crime by the BJP government,” he said referring to grounds on which the PSA was slapped on former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.

Members of the delegation of foreign envoys in Srinagar on Wednesday. (Express photo by Shuaib Masoodi)

Tarigami said whatever is happening in Kashmir should not be considered an issue of the Valley as it has implications for the entire country. The Kashmir issue, he said, has been is reduced to a real-estate issue.

“Kashmir is a big human tragedy,” he said.

“The government will repent what it did to J&K. I am also saying that all those people who clapped at the insult of Kashmir on August 5, where entire community of Kashmir was humiliated, will repent. The government has to take accountability…” Tarigami said.