Srinagar: Deciding not to be part of NC’s Jantar Mantar protest for statehood, Peoples Conference president Sajad Gani Lone on Friday said the protest scheduled by the National Conference on the first day of the Monsoon session of Parliament was a process to bury Article 370 and create confusion by taking Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood issue to pan-India politics.
Admitting that he can’t be certain of the NC’s true motive, he asserted that it seems this is less a genuine campaign for statehood and more an exercise aimed at burying Articles 370 and 35A for good, leaving statehood as a secondary and diminished consolation prize.
He said the ideal way to pursue restoration of statehood was for the Omar Abdullah government to call an emergency session of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly and pass a resolution.
“Then we should go as an all-party delegation to meet the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. If the statehood is still not restored, then we can move on to other options,” he said while addressing a press conference here.
Lone, who is an MLA from the Handwara segment, said his party’s position on Jammu and Kashmir’s status has not changed.
“The pre-August 5, 2019 status of Jammu and Kashmir, Article 370, Article 35A and full statehood remain paramount, with Article 370 being the most important of the three,” he added.
Lone said major political decisions in a democracy require consensus, and not unilateral calls to the street.
“In early August 2019, Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah had travelled to Delhi without taking other parties into confidence, only for a photograph with the prime minister to emerge the next day with assurances that nothing was going to change. The assurances were undone within 48 hours as Article 370 was revoked,” he said.
