National Conference leader Omar Abdullah Friday warned the people of Kashmir against boycotting the forthcoming assembly elections in the state, claiming it would benefit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
He said that election boycott had benefited the BJP in 2019Lok Sabha polls in Tral segment of Anantnag constituency. “If the trend ofparliamentary polls continues in the assembly elections, then there will be aBJP MLA from Tral,” Abdullah said addressing party workers here.
“Imagine, there will be a BJP MLA from the same Tral whichwas home to Burhan Wani and Zakir Musa, if there is a boycott,” he said.
Later, referring to the controversy over his remarks withsome news channels accusing him of praising the slain militant commanders, theformer Chief Minister said that he was only pointing out the strangecontradiction of boycott and did not praise anyone.
“I did no such thing. I was talking about how people shouldnot boycott elections. I mentioned that Tral, which gave birth to Burhan andMusa also gave BJP a lead in the LS elections because of a boycott. I waspointing out the strange contradiction of this. How is this praise?”Abdullah tweeted while responding to his criticism by a news channel.”I get that there is a design to create acertain narrative around me and my party which suits the ruling establishmentand while I expect no better from the north korean channels. I would expectchannels like yours to use your own minds rather than reproduce the line thatis given (sic),” he said in another tweet.