National Conference Additional General Secretary Mustafa Kamal Tuesday related the remarks of Union Minister Jitendra Singh on “autonomy” and “self-rule” to mocking at the miseries of the people of J&K and adding insult to their injuries.
In a statement issued here, he said that under the ruling BJP government, J&K suffered from multi-pronged attacks on its identity and rights. “The union minister has made a laughing stock out of him by brazenly lying on democracy,” Kamal said in the staetment. Rejecting the remarks of the union minster, he said that the indicators of democracy nosedived in J&K post abrogation of Articles 370 and 35-A.
“Far from what the union minister is absurdly claiming, the ruling BJP has consciously disenfranchised the people of J&K by downgrading a State that boasted of its own constitution and flag into a union territory by obliterating its supreme law-making body in the form of legislative assembly and by cutting on the rights of the natives by doling out successive notification and orders on land laws,” Kamal said. “What autonomy and self rule is he talking about? J&K boasted the most powerful legislature in the country that had to its credit famous land to tiller reforms and other measures that changed the fate of millions of people of J&K. In the new scheme of things supplanted on J&K, our legislature has been put on a much lower pedestal than that of other states. Is this the self-rule and autonomy Jitender Singh is referring to?”
He said that the people of J&K had been sidelined at all levels of government and that Kashmiris in particular had taken the major brunt of the measures taken by New Delhi on August 5, 2019.