Srinagar: The Peoples Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti has accused Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah of reviving the plebiscite debate following his remarks about the conditional accession of J&K with the Union of India in 1947.
“Omar saheb again talks about plebiscite. [For the NC] Sometimes it is India and sometimes it is freedom. Should we forget who sowed the seeds of confusion in the minds of people about the accession [of J&K to India] in 1953?” said Mufti at a press conference on Monday, March 3.
“Who normalised the downgrading of the post of J&K’s prime minister to chief minister in 1975 and the post of ‘Sadr-e-Riyasat’ to ‘governor’?,” Mufti said, in an oblique reference to NC founder Sheikh Abdullah, Omar Abdullah’s grandfather.
She continued: “Who committed irregularities in 1987 for paving graveyards in J&K? Who made [Hizbul Mujahideen supreme commander Syed] Salahuddin? Who is responsible for the jailing of [Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front] Yasin Malik? In 1996 when lakhs of people had sacrificed their lives, which party agreed to fight elections on old salary?”
Article 370 and Omar Abdullah
The PDP chief was reacting to Abdullah’s remarks on Article 370 in an interview with a TV channel in the national capital last week. Abdullah had asserted that the people of J&K were promised a plebiscite at the time of the accession with India in 1947.
Abdullah claimed that Article 370 in the constitution was meant to be a “temporary or transitional” provision. “A plebiscite was promised. At the time of accession, J&K’s status was not fully formalised. It was understood that its future would be determined through democratic means,” Abdullah had said.
The chief minister had noted that the accession, however, was “final” along with the conditions and the framework that enabled it following its ratification by J&K’s constituent assembly on February 6, 1954.
“Both aspects must be treated equally, rather than one being considered permanent and the other temporary. The accession framework should have remained unchanged,” he had said.
Hitting out at the ruling party, Mufti said that the NC has become “an extension” of the Bhartiya Janta Party by maintaining a silence on the “disempowerment and dispossession” of people of Jammu and Kashmir following the constitutional changes of 2019.
“Our chief minister says he doesn’t want to become another [former Delhi chief minister Arvind] Kejriwal. We don’t want him to become a Kejriwal but why can’t he stand up for the rights of people. People voted for the NC to undo the changes made since 2019 [by the BJP] but they have been let down badly,” she said.
Referring to the initiatives of the PDP-BJP coalition government which ruled J&K between 2015-2018, including the offer of dialogue to the Hurriyat and the ceasefire along the Line of Control with Pakistan, Mufti claimed that she brought down the saffron party “on their knees” and “didn’t allow them [the BJP] to touch Article 370”.
“Be it the amnesty for stone pelters or ceasefire [with Pakistan], it was our agenda that became the agenda of the [PDP-BJP] alliance [in 2015]. Unfortunately, it seems that the National Conference has succumbed [to the pressure of the BJP],” she said.
Lieutenant governor and Omar Abdullah
The PDP chief was speaking with reporters after the lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha’s address on the first day of the assembly’s Budget Session. Criticising the LG, Mufti said that his address did not touch on the issues of “disempowerment” of Jammu and Kashmir.
“There was no mention of the resolution for restoration of Article 370 [brought by the NC] in the address. This cabinet has not even dared to bring it up. What else can we say?” she said.
In his address, LG Sinha praised Abdullah for personally chairing meetings of all 20 districts of J&K and engaging directly with elected representatives ‘for the first time’ before the budget formulation.
“The voices of the people are again shaping the allocation of resources and the prioritisation of development goals. This budget is a true celebration of democracy-an expression of the dreams and expectations of every household, every community, and every region of J&K,” Sinha said in the assembly.
The assembly session is expected to be full of fireworks with the PDP and other opposition parties likely to target the ruling party on the issue of the restoration of J&K’s statehood and the “normalisation” of the constitutional changes in Jammu and Kashmir after its special status was rescinded in 2019 by the BJP-led Union government.
