Srinagar: Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah Wednesday reacted angrily to claims of former R&AW chief A S Dulat that he had “privately backed” the Article 370 abrogation, and accused him of “cheap stunts” to boost the sales of his forthcoming book.
Dismissing Dulat’s claims that the National Conference (NC) would have “helped” pass the proposal to abrogate the special status of the erstwhile state had it been taken into confidence, Abdullah, the 87-year-old president of the party, said this was a “figment of imagination” of the author.
Dulat’s book ‘The Chief Minister and the Spy’ is slated for release on April 18.
Abdullah pointed out that both he and his son, Omar Abdullah, had been put under arrest for several months at the time of the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019. “We were detained because our stand against the abrogation of special status was well-known,” he told PTI.
He said that he had taken the initiative to bring together all major political forces in Jammu and Kashmir and formed the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), a coalition of political parties to defend the special status of the state.
Abdullah ridiculed Dulat’s claim that the NC would have got a resolution passed in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly for the abrogation of Article 370.
“The claim in the book that the National Conference was planning to pass a resolution on the abrogation of the special status is merely a figment of the imagination of the author who claims to be my friend,” Abdullah said.
Highlighting gaps in Dulat’s reasoning, he said, “A benchmark of common sense should have been adopted by the author while penning the so-called memoirs. He should have remembered that there was no assembly in 2018 which could have been dissolved.”
Abdullah insisted that even if the assembly had been in session, he would have never considered passing such a resolution.
Asked whether he had the opportunity to review the book, the NC president remarked, “It is full of inaccuracies that, after a while, I thought I was reading a fiction and left it.”
The former chief minister also referenced a specific error where Dulat claimed to have advised him against having a large Cabinet in 1996, to say that he was “sworn in with 25 ministers”, not a small number as suggested.
Abdullah dismissed Dulat’s portrayal of their relationship, particularly the claim that he frequently heeded the author’s advice.
“The author claims that Abdullah would always listen to his advice, which is yet another example of underestimating me. I am a man of my own mind, and I only decide. I am not anyone’s puppet,” he asserted.
Regarding Dulat’s claim that the NC wanted closer relations with the BJP, Abdullah strongly denied it.
“Dulat’s claim that the National Conference wanted to get close to the BJP is an absolute lie as I am not the one who will patch up with a party that is out and out to destroy my party.”
Abdullah expressed disappointment with Dulat’s actions. “The worst is that he claims to be my friend, and as has been said, ‘Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart, and the wound lasts a lifetime,’ and I guess his inaccuracies just for cheap publicity would last a lifetime now,” he added.
The former RAW chief A S Dulat has claimed that Farooq Abdullah privately supported the Article 370 move of the Centre, even though he and his National Conference party dubbed the abrogation as a betrayal.
“We would have helped (pass the proposal). Why were we not taken into confidence?” Farooq Abdullah asked Dulat, according to the book, published by Juggernaut.
Notably, Farooq Abdullah and Omar met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi just days before the abrogation. “What transpired…nobody will ever know,” Dulat writes in the book.
