The chief Ministers of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu were among the Opposition leaders who on Monday criticised the confinement of J&K CM Omar Abdullah and his ministers ahead of the observance of Martyrs’ Day on July 13.
West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee posted on X: “What is wrong in visiting the graveyard of martyrs?… What happened to an elected Chief Minister is unacceptable. Shocking. Shameful.”
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin, in a post on X, said that at a time when there is a growing demand for the restoration of J&K’s statehood, the current events are a grim reminder of how far things have deteriorated.
“The elected CM Hon’ble @OmarAbdullah is being placed under house arrest simply for wanting to pay homage to the 1931 martyrs and is forced to climb walls to do so. Is this how an elected Chief Minister should be treated?” he asked.
Stalin hit out at the BJP-ruled Centre, saying it was stripping away the rights of elected state governments.
“This is not just about one state or one leader. From Tamil Nadu to Kashmir, the Union BJP Government is systematically stripping away the rights of elected State Governments.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav used poetry to remind the BJP about the possibility of it having to sit in the opposition in future: “If you keep imposing restrictions on every matter like this, then when the regime changes, tell me yourself, which border will you cross to escape?” he said in Hindi on X.
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July 13 is commemorated as Martyrs’ Day in J&K in tribute to 22 people killed by the Dogra army outside Srinagar’s central jail in 1931. The L-G administration had dropped the day from the list of gazetted holidays in 2020.
CPI leader D Raja condemned Abdullah’s detention as insulting. And the J&K Congress called it a “chilling reminder of how far we’ve drifted from democratic values”.
