Srinagar, Feb 27: Silencing his critics, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Thursday said the Centre is supporting the elected government of Jammu and Kashmir, and they have promised to restore the statehood restoration.
“The Centre has not kept any way for the confrontation, they are supporting the elected government in any way, they have promised the restoration of statehood restoration, but if they change their stance, then we will also change our approach,” he said
He was speaking at ‘Ummedu Ka Jammu Kashmir’ by ‘THE RED MIKE DIALOGUES With Omar Abdullah. ’
He said that Amit Shah is the Union Home Minister and that meeting him was nothing unusual. “When I met Chidmabaram and other HMs in the past, nobody talked about it. You cannot work without the support of the Centre,” he said
About Prime Minister Narendra Modi nominating him for his obesity campaign, he said had there been a chief minister who has completed a half marathon, then he would have stated that there was injustice with him. “Obesity is not a political problem. It is a social problem,” he said.
He said that having an assembly in the Union Territory is a hybrid system and that the country should either have only states or only UTs.
About the statehood restoration with half powers, he said, “There is no model in India where you have a full state without all powers. So unless you are envisaging a situation where J&K would be treated uniquely, I don’t see how this will work. If you plan to treat JK uniquely, then please explain what August 5, 2019, was about. If I am not mistaken, all of those were saying that JK has been brought at par with the rest of the country.”
“The whole idea was that you can’t have two systems in one country. If it is one country with one system, then how can you now propose a new system just of JK? You have to treat us at par.”
He added that he is not disagreeing with the statistics as during his tenure, the trend of militancy-related incidents, recruitment, and other related things had also gone down in the past. “The progress has not been made due to the removal of Article 370. It is because the Centre took measures that the J&K government would have never taken,” he said, adding, “Removal of Article 370 has had no impact on improvement on the security situations. That is because of the territory under President’s rule and it is how you handled the security forces.”
“The officers I am working with have not been appointed by me. They will listen to those who have the right to remove or appoint them,” he said when asked whether the officers are listening to the elected government. “There should be either UTs or States only. If it is UT, then there should be no assembly; don’t make the hybrid system,” he said.
About INDIA block, he said, “We have been fighting against each other very much. The INDIA bloc should decide its role. If it is for the Lok Sabha polls only, then we should wind it up and form it again in the next parliamentary polls. But there is a need to fight joint assembly polls too. In J&K, we barely managed to save the alliance, and till the end, it was not showing any signs of going for the polls jointly. When we were discussing the seat sharing with Congress, we were not ready to reduce our numbers as we were sure that we would manage to secure this number of seats.”
He also said that the Congress has willingly decided to stay away from the cabinet as JKPCC Chief had told him during the swearing-in ceremony that they will not be a part of the government till the statehood is restored. However, he said that a space in the cabinet has been kept for them.