Srinagar: A day after the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly passed the resolution on special status, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said it wanted to send out a message that the Central government’s decision to abrogate Article 370 was not acceptable to the people.
Introduced by Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Kumar Choudhary, the resolution passed by the majority in the 90-member Legislative Assembly sought the restoration of Article 370, which was unilaterally abrogated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in August 2019.
It urged the Government of India to initiate a dialogue with the elected representatives of Jammu and Kashmir to work out constitutional mechanisms for restoring the region’s constitutional safeguards. “It (abrogation of Article 370) happened without our permission, will or consultation,” Abdullah added.
His statement comes amid the pandemonium spurred by the resolution with the key Opposition BJP opposing the resolution seeking it be withdrawn. The government tactically moved it through Choudhary, who hails from Jammu where all the 28 MLAs of BJP hail from and reflected the aspirations of that region as well.
Interestingly, the deputy chief minister ended his year-long association with the BJP to sign up with NC in July 2023. Earlier, he was with the Peoples Democratic Party.
Without naming opposition parties, the Chief Minister said that some people taunted them that the ruling National Conference forgot to table a resolution in the first session of the Assembly held after a gap of over six years.
“We are not those who betray. We are the people who know the law. We know how things are done in Assembly. We wanted to raise our voice through the assembly which could not be neglected by the entre,” Abdullah said.
The resolution was moved on the third day of the ongoing session with the first two days listed for Governor’s address and obituary. Amid the listed business, the Peoples Democratic Party legislator Waheed Ur Rehman Parra stole the show by moving a resolution on Article 370 before the Governor’s address with Abdullah dubbing it aimed at hogging 'cameras'.
According to Abdullah, they could have moved a resolution in the Assembly on the first day on Monday but that would have been binned by the central government. “We wanted to force them to speak to us. We passed the resolution and told the world what we wanted and what we would achieve.”
