Gulmarg, May 28: Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Wednesday said the Pahalgam attack has not stalled the conversation around restoration of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir and that he had raised the issue at the recent meeting of the NITI Aayog governing council.
“No, not at all. If you were to take out the formal speech that circulated in the NITI Aayog meeting, you will find a categorical mention for return of statehood in that … which was given to the Honourable Prime Minister and all the members of the governing council of the NITI Aayog,” Abdullah told reporters in this tourist resort of north Kashmir, 52 kilometres from Srinagar.
Abdullah was responding to a question about whether the Pahalgam terror attack had affected the talk about the restoration of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir.
“So, the conversation around statehood has not stalled. The only thing I was unwilling to do was to use the special session of the (Jammu and Kashmir) Assembly to talk about statehood. But that does not mean the conversation has stopped. The conversation is ongoing,” he said.
During the special assembly session last month, Omar had ruled out engaging in “cheap politics” by demanding the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood after the Pahalgam terror attack that left 26 people, 25 of them tourists, dead on April 22.
He was speaking in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly during a special session held to condemn the attack.
The special session, convened after the brutal terror attack on pilgrims in Pahalgam, passed a resolution unanimously, condemning the killings and expressing solidarity with the victims’ families.
The attack has evoked widespread grief across the region.
He criticised those trying to politicise the tragedy and said the Assembly had rarely witnessed such deep sorrow. “Neither this Assembly nor the Parliament has fully grasped the depth of the people’s pain,” he said.
The session ended with members across party lines standing in silence to honour the victims of the Pahalgam attack.