SRINAGAR: National Conference leader Omar Abdullah on Sunday said restoration of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir is not an issue for his party in the Lok Sabha polls, asserting that it will get the statehood anyway in view of commitment by the prime minister and the Union home minister.
Abdullah also said the results of the Lok Sabha polls will have an impact on the upcoming assembly elections in the Union territory.
“Statehood is not an issue for us. Our battle is not for statehood, we will get the statehood anyway. Why should we waste people’s time on an issue that the PM and the home minister is committed to?” Abdullah told reporters in Kupwara district where he was campaigning.
“Elections keep coming, this is not the first parliamentary election and it will not be the last, elections were held 5 years ago and there will be elections after 5 years, but the importance of the current election has increased because it is the first major election after August 5, 2019. The way our state was disrupted on that day, our identity, our identity and our existence were destroyed, in the current election, the people here have been given an opportunity to send a message through their votes that we do not accept these decisions.”
“Till a month and a half ago, I had no intention of contesting the election here, but when the BJP’s A, B and C teams started interfering and playing games, the party decided to field me from here. We are again passing through the period from which we were rescued by Sher-e-Kashmir, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah. He established democracy here by freeing us from political slavery, established constitutional and democratic institutions so that the common people could be heard, and freed the people here from economic slavery by giving ownership rights to the lands with the power of Article 370. But today we are being pushed in that direction again,” he said.
“No effort is being spared to destroy democracy, Delhi is again working to take our lands under some pretext to push us towards the same economic slavery. People are being evicted from the land through road, rail, factories and other pretexts, bulldozers are being run even where those who got land under the Roshni Act. And all this became possible because after the 2014 elections, the PDP and the People’s Conference supported the BJP, while at that time we announced our unconditional support to the PDP but these people rejected our unconditional offer,” he added.