Srinagar, Sep 09 (KNO): Congress Working Committee (CWC) member and General Secretary of AICC, Ghulam Ahmad Mir on Tuesday condemned the arrest of Doda MLA Mehraj Malik under the Public Safety Act (PSA), terming it a politically motivated move aimed at diverting the attention of the people of Jammu and Kashmir from core issues.
Speaking to reporters, Mir, as per the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), alleged that such detentions were being carried out with ‘clear intentions’ rather than by mistake.
“This is all management, how to move away from real public concerns and shift the attention towards non-issues,” he said, citing a pattern of controversies around religious shrines like Dargah Sharif being used to overshadow governance issues.
Mir said the PSA had been ‘misused for decades’ and that ‘civil society and civilised nations do not endorse its application on innocent people.’ He questioned the timing of Malik’s arrest, saying that after 10 years of waiting, people had elected their representatives through a democratic process.
He questioned the rationale behind the stringent measure, saying the issue was “not so grave that from Delhi to the Deputy Commissioner level, the entire machinery decided to invoke PSA against him.”
“Detaining an elected MLA is like silencing the very voice of the public who voted for him,” Mir said.
Mir, however, added that an MLA should know how to put forth the issues of the public with decency, stating that Malik lacked a language approach.
He also criticised the administration’s handling of public projects, claiming that unnecessary political branding, like boards placed on shrine renovation works, had triggered avoidable controversies. “Work speaks for itself; you don’t need a board to claim it,” he said—(KNO)
