The lieutenant governor’s administration has taken a tough stand against Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP with police detaining former ministers, legislators and activists during a protest over water shortage and electricity tariff hikes.

The party had recently made conciliatory gestures towards the government.

The police foiled a march by the PDP in Srinagar on Tuesday soon after the participants left the party headquarters in Lal Chowk for the city centre.

The party said they were highlighting key civic issues like rising electricity tariffs, acute shortage of drinking and irrigation water, and the demand for shifting Kashmiri detainees back to local jails.

A spokesperson said the police detained several former ministers and legislators, including Ghulam Nabi Lone Hanjura, Basharat Bukhari, Abdul Haq Khan, Mohammad Khurshid Alam and Zahoor Ahmad Mir.

PDP president and former chief minister Mehbooba accused the administration of showing disproportionate urgency in suppressing peaceful protests by her party, while failing to address pressing public issues in Jammu and Kashmir.

“It appears that the administration only flexes its might when it comes to foiling PDP protests and detaining our workers. If only this same power and urgency were applied to address the worsening water crisis, skyrocketing power bills, alarming 17.4% unemployment rate and unresolved issue of political prisoners,” she said in a post on X.

Mehbooba said the PDP’s protests had been silenced ever since the party raised its voice against the “unconditional scrapping of Article 370 and human rights violations”, regretting that “raising concerns over governance failures has become a punishable act”.

In recent weeks, Mehbooba had initiated a thaw in her strained relations with Sinha’s administration and the BJP-led government at the Centre. She met the LG for
the first time after he took over in 2020.