Leaders and supporters of the two regional parties exchanged barbs on social media platforms, blaming each other’s leadership of ‘toeing Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) line and deviating from election promises
Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah’s praise for Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the inaugural ceremony for the Z-Morh tunnel in Ganderbal’s Sonamarg did not sit well with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders, triggering a war of words between the PDP and the National Conference (NC).
Leaders and supporters of the two regional parties exchanged barbs on social media platforms, blaming each other’s leadership of ‘toeing Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) line and deviating from election promises’.
PDP blamed Omar, who is the NC vice-president, for labelling others as BJP stooges even as he was ‘walking the extra mile’ to woo BJP leadership, especially the PM and senior leaders.
The NC leaders reminded PDP of its tenure in alliance with the BJP, claiming that at the time, all its leaders, including founder Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, were all praise for the saffron party.
“Whatever Omar is doing, he is doing it right. He is the CM and to give respect and a warm welcome to the PM of the country isn’t wrong. And if the CM praises the PM for keeping his promises, he didn’t say anything wrong. There should be a good relationship with the Centre for things to work in J&K’s favour. We have seen in the past that confrontation has yielded nothing,” said an NC legislator, requesting not to be named.
Omar’s advisor Nasir Aslam Wani said the CM welcomed PM as ‘he ought to’. “What did they (PDP) do when they were in power? Don’t they want statehood restoration? Whatever happened with J&K was due to wrong policies of the PDP,” he said, defending the CM.
Former legislator and senior PDP leader Khursheed Alam, however, said the language of CM during his address was ‘very different’ from what he used to say about the BJP. “His speech looked like the speech of a BJP spokesperson. He never looked like the J&K CM and didn’t respect the mandate of the people,” Alam said.
PDP youth leader and legislator Waheed ur Rehman Parra blamed Omar for ‘changing discourse’. “Omar is downgrading the political discourse of J&K to statehood and not advocating reconciliation, Article 370 and political prisoners,” he said.
NC spokesperson Imran Nabi Dar went a step ahead, saying that the Opposition wants to ‘sabotage’ restoration of J&K’s statehood. “It’s a concerted effort by the Opposition to sabotage the restoration of statehood in J&K. We are in this position because of the PDP, who made sure that they had an alliance with BJP, not once, but twice. They were rejected by people in consecutive elections,” Dar said.
Political analyst Ahmad Ali Fayaz praised the way Omar raised the issue of statehood in front of the PM.
“Many of us didn’t expect him to be bold and blunt to remind India’s Prime Minister @narendramodi his THIRD YOGA DAY PROMISE of restoration of the Statehood to Jammu and Kashmir. Yet Chief Minister @OmarAbdullah did it. It is for the first time that the demand for restoration of Statehood has been presented by J&K’s CM to the country’s PM at a public congregation in Kashmir. It’s part of the collective demand for restoration of all constitutional guarantees which were taken away in 2019 and thereafter. Unmistakably it includes restoration of Article 370,” Fayaz said in a post on micro-blogging platform X.
He said that it was now up to the PM to resolve this.
