Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Thursday appealed once again to the Centre to fulfil the promise of restoring statehood to Jammu and Kashmir.
Asked about his next step if J&K is not given statehood soon, Abdullah said “all the ways are open before us”. “However, I am still hopeful that the promise made to the people of Jammu and Kashmir will be fulfilled without the issuance of any threat and before the situation worsens in J&K,” he said.
He also asked journalists to question the BJP on why the Centre is not restoring statehood, despite it being one of the promises it made to the people of J&K, who gave the party 28 seats in the Legislative Assembly from the Jammu region in the 2024 elections.
“There is, perhaps, no need to talk about our next course of action. If the situation demands, we will again call a press conference here and make another announcement. However, at the moment, there is no such situation,” the CM said.
When asked whether a delay in statehood was a pressure tactic from the BJP on the National Conference-led government in J&K, Abdullah said it would be unfortunate if the people of J&K “are deprived of their right to statehood just because the BJP could not form the government”.
“They never said before the Supreme Court or in Parliament that they will give statehood only when the Chief Minister is from the BJP,” he said, adding, “They had only talked about the three-step process — delimitation, election and statehood…No ifs and buts.”
“Now if they are trying to say that statehood will not come until we shake hands with them, then I take it that there will be no statehood for the next four years, because, after taking the people’s mandate, we will not allow this conspiracy of the BJP to succeed,” he said.
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Pointing out that he still believes that a resolution of most of the issues facing the people is possible only through the restoration of statehood, CM Abdullah said his government is doing everything possible for the betterment of the people of J&K under the given circumstances. “The NC government is consistently making efforts to get statehood back from the Centre,” he said.
