SRINAGAR, Dec 5: Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today said he will take up the issue of restoring Statehood to Jammu and Kashmir with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Omar told reporters after attending a function to commemorate the 42nd foundation day of SKIMS Hospital here that the Prime Minister and the Home Minister were busy with elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand. “But now that they have time, this issue will be taken up so that J&K’s Statehood is restored soon,”
“We have to fight a big battle. And we want to fight that battle so that Jammu and Kashmir gains the status of a State again. We hope that the promises that the Prime Minister has made to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, not to us, but to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, during the Parliament election and after that during the Assembly election,” he said.
The Chief Minister said that the people of J&K participated in the Assembly and Parliamentary elections to get the status of the State back.
“In both the elections, the people of J&K participated overwhelmingly. There was no complaint anywhere that they were forced to vote in the polling booth. They went by their own will. They succeeded in this election with the hope that the promises made to them, especially to get the status of the State back, we will get it back,” he said.
Asked if the holiday on the NC founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s birth anniversary will be restored, Omar said there are many things that need to be brought back in J&K, but the priority is to restore its Statehood first.
“There are many other dates as well, but we have to fight a bigger contest. We have to fight for the restoration of J-K’s Statehood. We are hopeful that the Prime Minister will keep his promise made not to us, but to the people of J-K during the Lok Sabha elections and the Assembly polls that followed,” Abdullah said.
On Masjid surveys, Omar said that every religious person has freedom to live in this country.
“There is a word in our Constitution, secular. As long as that word is in our constitution, it means that no matter what our religion is, even if we do not believe in any religion, we still have the right to live in this country freely.
Now, why are they trying to target our places, our mosques under a conspiracy? I have said this again and again. You say, do not appease the Muslims. Do not appease. We do not ask for appeasement. But not doing appeasement does not mean that you target us. Do not target us in the name of not appeasing us. Do not victimize us,” he said.
The Chief Minister said that going after Masjids, shrines and after the way Muslims are practicing their religion, they are victimizing the community.
“And this is not the India that J&K was a part of. This is not the India our founding fathers envisaged. This is not India that has the word secular in its constitution. As long as it is there, keep it secular. If you do not want to keep it, then you can remove it from the Parliament,” he said.
On the importance of SKIMS Hospital, Omar said it was built so that people of J&K do not feel the need to go to other tertiary care institutes such as the PGI or AIIMS.
“This hospital has served the people of J&K. Yet there are some weaknesses and shortcomings. The autonomy of SKIMS, along with its engineering wing, must be restored,” he added.
The Chief Minister demanded an investigation into the attack on Akali Dal leader Sukhbir Singh Badal.
“Grateful to the almighty that he survived. It is a matter of concern that a former deputy Chief Minister, who has Z-plus security, can be attacked like this in broad daylight. This needs to be investigated to ensure it does not happen again. Why is this happening? Punjab went through a very difficult phase in the 80s and early 90s. And God forbid, we see something like that again,” he added.