By Arif Bashir
Ahead of the civic and panchayat polls, the Congress party was rocked last Friday with party workers staging a protest at the party headquarter in Srinagar accusing state Congress chief and former Union minister, Prof Saif-ud-din Soz for patronizing “brokers and counter-insurgents” in the party. The workers demanded his immediate removal.
Shouting anti-Soz and pro-Congress slogans, the workers registered their protests against Soz, for “polluting” the party by joining hands with “counter-insurgents and brokers.”
Asking Sonia Gandhi to intervene and remove Soz from his position for the “betterment” of the party and its “credibility among the masses,” the agitating workers alleged that such designs would ruin the party image for all times to come. “We want the immediate removal of Saif-ud-Din Soz as the state party president,” the protesting Congress workers said while appealing to Sonia Gandhi to take concrete steps in this regard “if Congress was to maintain its clean political record.”
It is pertinent to mention that the reaction of the workers came after the party state chief welcomed many new entrants in the party, including Imtiyaz Ahmad Parray, son of the infamous counter-insurgent Kukka Parray and Master Mohammad Maqbool Malla.
“These new entrants are purely killers and the party decision is entirely wrong. The high command must intervene in order to maintain the party reputation or else it will be the end of Congress in the Kashmir valley,” said Ghulam Mohammad Dar, a Congress block president from Budgam. Another Congress worker, Sajad Ahmed alleged that Soz had acquired 420 kanals of land by bribing revenue officials. “Nobody has dared to ask him from where he acquired such property.” He accused the state Congress chief of tarnishing the party’s image.
“Saif-ud-Din Soz and his close aides in the party have amassed huge wealth,” alleged Abdul Razzaq, Congress block president from Khan Sahib Budgam. “In Baramulla and Budgam districts he owns branches of Delhi Public School,” he alleged adding that while Soz is minting money running private schools, ordinary Congress workers’ children are struggling for bare minimum educational facilities in almost defunct government schools.