Jammu: National Conference (NC) President Farooq Abdullah Wednesday accused the Centre of backtracking on the March 6 deadline for submission of the Delimitation Commission report.
“Being members of the Commission, we were neither invited nor shown any preliminary report,” he said addressing a convention of NC OBC Cell here.
The three-time chief minister expressed concern over the “unprecedented media-gag” and called for bringing legislation for ensuring complete freedom to the press with a caveat that nothing should be reported that can jeopardise communal harmony and brotherhood.
He alleged that the Centre was deviating from its assurance that there would be no extension to the Delimitation Commission beyond 6 March 2022 for submitting its report to enable elections to the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly.
He said that the people of J&K could not wait anymore as there was no alternative to the popular government.
“The people have lost their patience due to bad governance of authoritarian and bureaucratic rule. There can be no substitute for the elections and the way the government is dilly-dallying the delimitation report, it appears they have no intention to hold polls in near future. They are making false promises on regular basis,” Abdullah said.
He rubbished the claims of normalcy in Kashmir saying that the Centre remained in denial over “Kashmiri Pandits leaving Kashmir in the wake of recent civilian killings”.
“They are also misleading about the tourism revival and the height is that nobody in the media is mustering the courage to report objectively and fearlessly as they are being slapped with serious charges for reporting facts,” the NC chief said. “How can you expect a free press when the media houses are starved of advertisements in case they report against the interests of the government.”
The convention adopted three resolutions, seeking rollback of the revocation of Article 370 to J&K and restoration of statehood, issuance of one-time category certificate to OBCs, and political reservation for these communities on the analogy of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities.