NC legislature party to meet on Thursday to elect leader in J&K Assembly

SRINAGAR: The legislature party of the National Conference will meet on Thursday to elect their leader in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly as party president Farooq Abdullah maintained that his son Omar Abdullah will be the first chief minister of the Union Territory.

The NC on Tuesday emerged as the single largest party with 42 seats as results of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly polls were declared. The party is comfortably placed to form the government as its alliance with Congress and CPI(M) got 49 seats in the 95-member house.

“The National Conference legislature party will meet tomorrow at half-past 12 to elect their leader,” the party vice president said.

Omar Abdullah said the NC legislature party meeting will be followed by a meeting of the alliance partners to elect the leader of the alliance in the House.

“Then we will go to the Raj Bhavan to stake the claim for government formation and ask the LG to fix a time for swearing in,” Omar Abdullah said, adding, “I hope the new government is in place in the next few days”.

However, NC president Farooq Abdullah asserted his supremacy over the choice of person who will head the government.

Reacting to his son’s statement that the alliance will decide the chief minister, the NC patriarch said, “Whatever I have decided, only that will happen”.

Farooq Abdullah said the aim of the NC-Congress government would be to minimise the differences between the two regions of the Union Territory and to build confidence among the Hindus.

In an apparent reference to the BJP, he said, “We have to minimise the differences that they have created between Jammu and Kashmir. Our endeavour should be that the Hindus there have this confidence in us that we will think about them in the same manner as about Kashmir”.

“We will not differentiate between the two. So what if they did not vote (for us). It is our duty to solve their problems,” Abdullah told reporters here.

Meanwhile, the Awami Ittehad Party headed by Sheikh Abdul Rashid alias Engineer Rash id hit out at Omar Abdullah for remaining silent about the restoration of Article 370 after the election victory.

“He appears to be running away from this core issue of the election campaign and has started now praising Narendra Modi and his government,” a spokesman of the AIP said in a statement.

Omar Abdullah, in multiple media interactions on Wednesday, said hoping for the restoration of Article 370 from the very people who snatched it would be “foolish,” but his party would keep the issue alive and continue to raise it.

“Our political stand will not change. We have never said that we will remain silent on Article 370 or that Article 370 is not an issue for us now,” Abdullah said when asked what the stand of the party would be on the matter after government formation.

“We will continue to talk on this and hope that tomorrow there will be a change of government in the country, there is a new setup with whom we can discuss this and get something for J&K,” Abdullah added.

Earlier in the day, Omar Abdullah said the NC-Congress government would pass a resolution demanding the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood in its first cabinet meeting.

“After the formation of the government, I hope in the first cabinet meeting, the cabinet will pass a resolution impressing upon the Centre to restore the statehood. The government should then take that resolution to the prime minister,” he said.

The former chief minister expressed hope that the government in Jammu and Kashmir will be able to run smoothly unlike in Delhi.

“There is a difference between us and Delhi. Delhi was never a state. No one promised Delhi statehood. Jammu and Kashmir was a state before 2019. We have been promised the restoration of statehood by the prime minister, the home minister and other senior ministers who have said that three steps will be taken in J&K — delimitation, election and then statehood.

“Delimitation has happened, the elections have now taken place as well. So, only the statehood remains which should be restored,” he added.

Asked how important the need for coordination between the new Jammu and Kashmir government and Centre, the NC leader said nothing can be achieved by having a confrontation with New Delhi.

“Let the government be formed first. This question should be posed to the chief minister. There should be a cordial relationship with New Delhi… we cannot address any issue by having a confrontation with the Centre.

“It is not that we will accept the BJP’s politics, or that the BJP will accept our politics. We will continue to oppose the BJP, but it is not our compulsion to oppose the Centre,” he said. (PTI)