‘Highly Incompetent’: Ex-IAS Gopinathan Slams Govt Over Kashmir

“It has been 70 days since an entire population in our country has been shut,” Kannan Gopinathan said. 

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/@naukarshah)

Ex-IAS officer Kannan Gopinathan, who had resigned in August as a protest against the denial of "freedom of expression" to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, took to Twitter on Tuesday, 15 October, to slam the government over the situation in the region more than two months after the effective abrogation of Article 370, as he called for fellow citizens to tape their mouths in protest.

"It has been 70 days since an entire population in our country has been shut. It was only after 69 days that even basic mobile communication was restored partially. If we are to be mute spectators to all this, let's be that in a proper way," Gopinathan wrote in a Twitter post.

Slamming the government, Gopinathan sought to counter the various narratives that have been put forward to justify the stripping away of the state's special status and the putting in place of virtual security and community lockdown.

"... a government which can't ensure both life and liberty for its people, and has to ask them to choose one, is highly incompetent and unfit to govern. It is better that they resign and go rather than give us arguments," Gopinathan argued.

The situation in Kashmir post the revocation of Article 370 continues to be volatile, as the police on Tuesday detained half a dozen women activists, including the sister and daughter of former chief minister Farooq Abdullah during a protest.

While postpaid cellular service connections were restored in Kashmir on 14 October, curbs on SMS services were reimposed. The subscribers will also have to wait for some more time for internet services to resume in the Valley, government spokesperson Rohit Kansal had told reporters.