MP Ruhullah aghast over bureaucratic hurdles for Anantnag event

The Anantnag administration’s move to lay down strict conditions for National Conference (NC) Member of Parliament (MP) Aga Syed Ruhullah to deliver a speech at a public event in south Kashmir on Friday (September 12, 2025), drew criticism from the ruling party’s MP and Opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).   

MP Ruhullah was scheduled to speak at a public event on Thursday (September 11, 2025) afternoon. However, the MP was surprised to see the list of conditions laid down by the District Magistrate and the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), while allowing the event and expressed his unhappiness over “the bid to threaten participants from attending it”.

“I want to ask why the local administration created a scene. It threatened students, well-meaning citizens and locals against attending our programme. What anti-national or anti-peace activities were being held? What terrorism was being held? Which direction are you pushing us?” MP Ruhullah said.

He said the officers of the district need to decide “if they were subservient to the Constitution or the dictations from Delhi”. “What gets you salary, Constitution or for functioning above the law? They work like brute Pherons. The idea of the chair has been propounded as one to terrorise the common man,” Mr. Ruhullah said.

Mr. Ruhullah’s speech came after the district administration laid down conditions for the event scheduled for September 11. It included that any sermon shall not be prejudicial to the security and sovereignty of the State and shall not indulge in any anti-national, anti-social anti-religious speeches or propaganda. “Also, (speakers) will not indulge in any propaganda against the establishment,” it warned.

The conditions also underlined that no anti-national or anti-social slogans, speech have bearing on law and order be delivered during the event. “No provocative banners, posters, placards etc. shall be displayed or hoisted during the programme event,” it reads.

However, the organisers said the venue for the MP’s speech was made unavailable in spite of these conditions at the last minute. “Mr. Ruhullah was invited to Anantnag. We wanted to pay our gratitude to him for raising people’s voices. The venue, however, was not made available on the pretext that the Municipal Building was unsafe. Though a function was allowed a day before. We managed to use the verandah as the podium. We fail to understand why this treatment was meted to us,” Iftikhar Hussain Misgar, president of the Federation of Chambers of Industries Kashmir (FCIK), Anantnag, told The Hindu. 

Meanwhile, MP Ruhullah said the Doda administration’s move to slap Public Safety Act on sitting Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator Mehraj Malik was “also aimed at terrorising us”. 

Former J&K chief minister and PDP president Mehbooba Mufti also criticised the administration. “It is indeed unfortunate that Aga Ruhullah Mehdi, a sitting MP from Central Kashmir and a member of the ruling party invited by the citizen council, was reportedly denied permission by his own government to hold a meeting at the Town Hall in Anantnag,” Ms. Mufti said.

She said at a time when NC president Dr. Farooq Abdullah and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah “were rightly voicing concern over the arrest of MLA Mehraj Malik, such restrictions on their own party MP raise serious questions”. “It exposes a disturbing level of double standards and political hypocrisy,” she added.