It is has been volatile situation in entire J&K state as well as Country following the Lehtpora Pulwama Militant attack on CRPF convoy in which 49 CRPF personals died.
Though one expected the situation to be tense in Kashmir, but it is the other parts of Country included Jammu province of State where the situation has gone out hand so far. Jammu province in under Curfew from last two days with all sorts of activities coming to halt. There were attacks on Kashmiri community in the province and similar attacks were witnessed in Dehradun, Bihar and other parts of Country.
However, while one expected such things to happen following, one of the worst militant attacks in Kashmir insurgency, one never expected such things to happen in sports field.
Soon after the incident, East Bengal Football Club that was about to play its I-League game in Srinagar against Real Kashmir on February 28 wrote to All India Football Federation about the situation in Valley. Following that was the social media campaign started by the Minerva Punjab FC on its twitter handles in support of the armed forces. Minerva is scheduled to play its I-League match against Real Kashmir on February 18 in Srinagar.
It was normal on part of them to request match change or even venue change but the way the Minerva and its owner handled the situation signifies lack of maturity and better sense. It seems like that Minerva Punjab wants to gain full mileage out of the incident as they are already out of title race and even race for qualification into Super Cup. Minerva stands at ninth place on points table and even have got a chance of getting relegated.
After AIFF denied their request citing Kashmir situation normal for the game of football, club and its owner’s management started new ploy. They just intensified their social media campaign and even went on to drag its local star Danish Bhat into controversy. They started to share the posts of Danish and other former members of the club regarding their support for Pakistan cricket team. They even shared Danish’s social media post about love for Coke Studio music. This all for what, just to get maximum mileage out of the incident in which 49 humans lost their lives.
While Minerva is trying its best to show its love for the Country and Armed Forces, to drag players into the controversy and use them for their personals interest is not the right thing to do. At the same time one needs to ask the Minerva while they boost their love and dedication for Armed Forces, what they have done for them in-between.
Did any of the Minerva officials visit the family of the personals killed in the incident. Did they pledged to support any of them.
Till This Time we have heard nothing in that regard. We hope our these words will motivate them to do that instead of jumping into the unwanted rhetoric through which they are just destroying the Sports and the Respect whatever they had in the community.
Let Sport be Sports and don’t use Players for the personal gain.