Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday remarked that leaders like former Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Atal Bihari Vajpayee had a vision for Kashmir, but the present dispensation at the Centre is bent on creating a divide between the Hindus and the Muslims.

The former Jammu & Kashmir chief minister slammed the Bhartiya Janata Party-led (BJP) government at the Centre and said that those in Delhi are using the Union territory as a laboratory and are experimenting here.

"Those in Delhi are using Jammu & Kashmir as a laboratory and are experimenting here. Leaders like Nehru and Vajpayee had a vision for Jammu & Kashmir but this government creates a divide between Hindu and Muslims. Sardars are now Khalistani, we are Pakistani, only BJP is Hindustani," Mehbooba Mufti was quoted as saying by news agency ANI at a press conference in Srinagar.

Mufti criticised the Union territory's administration's decision to change the names of government-run schools after slain security personnel and said these exercises won't automatically fetch students jobs.

“They are only changing names (naming schools after martyrs) but children will not get employment by changing names,” the PDP leader was quoted as saying.

Mufti asked what Prime Minister Narendra Modi was doing to tackle the high unemployment rate in the Union territory.

In August last, Jammu divisional commissioner Raghav Langer notified that all government-run schools in the Union territory will be renamed after Indian Army Jawans, CRPF and state police personnel who were killed in the line of duty. In a letter to the deputy commissioners of 10 Jammu districts, he asked them to identify government schools that can be named after the slain soldiers.

Supporting the strike called by the traders’ body in Jammu on Wednesday, against the opening of Reliance retail stores in the city, Mufti said the shops will destroy small businesses. "What we have in the country, they (BJP government) are selling to corporate houses", she was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

On Sunday, the PDP chief said her party would fight the upcoming assembly elections in Jammu & Kashmir while ruling out any alliance with the BJP.

Mufti also accused the BJP of playing politics over the issues of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and Pakistan's purported role in it, to attract votes in Kashmir. She said the government doesn't talk about farmers rights and unemployment, and alleged that the BJP has brought miseries to the people of the country and left Jammu and Kashmir “destroyed”.

Coming down heavily on the BJP, Mufti said that it is not Hindus but the “democracy and India which are in danger under the BJP rule”, which has undone all the "good work" of the past 70 years of the Congress. She remarked that the BJP is selling national assets and raising the prices of essentials commodities to fill its coffers to "buy or intimidate" opposition legislators.

The PDP leader claimed all projects which were launched during her tenure as the chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir have been halted by the BJP-led government at the Centre.