Won’t contest elections till JK is a UT: Omar Abdullah
Srinagar, July 27: Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Monday said that he will not contest Assembly elections till Jammu and Kashmir remains a Union Territory.
Omar in a column written in the ‘Indian Express’ said that “As for me, I am very clear that while J&K remains a Union Territory I will not be contesting any Assembly elections. Having been a member of the most empowered Assembly in the land and that, too, as the leader of that Assembly for six years, I simply cannot and will not be a member of a House that has been disempowered the way ours has.”
“With almost all of my senior colleagues still detained in their homes, the NC is yet to meet to decide its next political course of action and I will work diligently to strengthen the party, carry forward its agenda and continue to represent the aspirations of the people while we fight against the injustices heaped on J&K in the last one year,” he wrote.
Omar Abdullah, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Union Minister in the Vajpayee Government and vice president of JKNC, was detained by the J&K administration on August 4-5, 2019, and, subsequently, under the Public Safety Act. He was released, after 232 days, on March 24.
“It was understood that so long as J&K remained a part of India, the special status enjoyed by it would remain. This is what makes it all the more distressing to see what was done last year. J&K has kept its side of the promise by remaining a part of the Union, the last 30 years of militancy notwithstanding. It has participated in the democratic processes and tried to share in the nation’s development, but the promise made with it was not kept. This is one of those moments when it’s important to ask whether it is better to be popular or to be right. Removing J&K’s special status may have been the popular thing to do but going back on a nation’s sovereign commitments is never going to be the right thing to do,” he said.
“We, in the J&K National Conference, do not agree with what has been done to J&K nor do we accept what has been done. We shall oppose this, our opposition will continue in the highest court in the land in the form of the legal challenge filed in the Supreme Court last year. We have always believed in democracy and peaceful opposition. Sadly these very democratic rights were trampled on a year ago. Dozens of mainstream politicians were placed in “preventive arrest” and many more under illegal house arrest. In fact, a number of these leaders are still under illegal detention a year later. The National Conference has lost thousands of workers and office-bearers to militant violence because of our choice to remain a mainstream political party while opposing the separatist politics that grew in the late 1980s. Given the orchestrated campaign against mainstream political parties in most of the national media, particularly at the hands of the ruling dispensation, it’s easy to find oneself asking whether the sacrifices were worth it,” wrote Omar Abdullah.