Mehbooba Mufti accused the government led by Manoj Sinha of sabotaging the democracy in the region and pushing youths to despair and hopelessness. Moving around the empty chairs where her party’s youth workers were supposed to sit during the youth convention, she said, the government is deliberately keeping youths away from such events and thus pushing them towards violence so that it becomes easy for the government to torture and beat them. “This is what they have been doing for the past three years. The youths are feeling suffocated as they have been confined to their homes. They want to come out but the government is not permitting them to do it,” she said. “Today thousands of youths were scheduled to reach here. They wanted to have a conversation. They wanted to talk and they wanted to speak. But the government doesn't want to have them this conversation,” she said. “I am proud of these youths. The government is not frightened of me. It is frightened of them. You (youths) should continue on your path and continue your peaceful struggle democratically,” she added. She said recently Prime Minister Narendra Modi told US President Joe Biden about the greatness of Indian democracy but in Jammu and Kashmir, democracy and democratic norms are trampled upon. “We are being stopped to hold meetings citing Covid excuses. And there are leaders who travel all around to reach out to people but we are not,” she added. “Why PDP is being stopped? Why I am not allowed to meet you (youths)," she said.