Srinagar: Congress leader Ghulam Ahmad Mir on Tuesday said there is no rift between his party and the ruling National Conference (NC) in Jammu and Kashmir.
Talking to reporters on the sidelines of an event held in south Kashmir’s Anantnag, Mir refuted reports about cracks between National Conference and Congress alliance.
“Neither we will become NC nor they will become Congress,” Mir asserted.
Maintaining the party’s ambivalence with regard to the Article 370 restoration, the senior Congress leader said both parties have different domains of working as one represents the regional aspirations, while another stands for the national interests.
“World knows that NC is a regional political party, and the regional agenda is their top priority. Congress is a national political party so its affairs will run according to national perspective,” Mir said.
“There might be differences of words in expressing our respective stands on issues but that does not mean that there are fissures between the alliance partners,” Mir told reporters.
Mir, who is an MLA from Dooru segment, said it was on the basis of ideological similarities that the Congress and the NC contested the elections together and are helping each in the government as well.
Asked about the resolution passed by J&K Assembly on restoration of statehood, Mir said there was nothing wrong in the resolution.
The Congress leader said some parties were trying to make it an election issue.
“Maybe the two parties will meet after the (assembly) elections are over in Jharkhand,” he added.
Pertinently, there has been a visible discomfort in NC after Congress president Malikarjun Kharge at a press conference in Pune distanced his party from the demand of restoration of Article 370 in J&K.
“Union Minister Amit Shah claims Congress wants to bring back Article 370, but who in Congress has ever stated this? Parliament has settled this issue. If BJP truly believes it, let them say it openly in Kashmir now that elections are over,” Kharge had said.
Senior NC leader and Srinagar MP Aga Ruhullah Mehdi had even openly criticised Kharge for “misinterpreting” the resolution passed by the J&K assembly, saying, “No INC president or JKPCC president has a right to misinterpret the resolution passed by the J&K Legislative Assembly in the last session. The purpose of that resolution is to express the people’s disapproval of all the amendments and unconstitutional abrogation of the guaranteed (Special) Status of J&K from the year 1953 to 2019.”
