Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Apr 24: Accusing National Conference (NC) of remembering Autonomy only during rainy days, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) today said when out of power, NC leaders suddenly start talking about autonomy and friendship with Pakistan while in power they scream about “bombing Pakistan” and “getting PoK back.”
“Not to go too far in the history even between 2009 and 2014, when NC was in power as a constituent of UPA, the party never raised the issue of Autonomy either with the Centre, or in the State Assembly,” PDP general secretary, Mohammad Sartaj Madni said in a statement issued here today. He said as NC is out of power today, the party leaders have again started raising depleted slogans of autonomy to befool the people.
“This kind of deceitful politics of the NC has now become outdated and hard to sell with the emancipated people of Jammu and Kashmir,” Madni said and added that had NC leaders been sincere and honest in their claims regarding autonomy, it would have been restored long time ago. “History is witness that instead of working sincerely for restoration of autonomy, NC leaders have time and again traded J&K’s political and economic interests for power,” he said.
Madni said right from Indira-Abdullah accord of 1975 through Rajiv-Farooq and Omar-Rahul pacts, NC has bartered not only the State’s political and economic interests, but its natural and water resources as well for power. “While NC has used ‘Azadi’, ‘Raishumari’, ‘Rawalpindi Road’ and ‘Autonomy’ in the past with good political dividends for itself, these slogans have no buyers now in the changed circumstances in J&K,” he said and added that even in 1996, Dr Farooq Abdullah had got a golden opportunity to bargain for certain political and economic measures for J&K, which unfortunately he wasted.
On the other hand, Madni said, PDP has been able to inspire confidence among a majority of the people in all the regions of the State about its ability to solve the multiple problems faced by Jammu and Kashmir on political, economic. administrative and financial fronts.
“Whether in or out of power, PDP has been working on its agenda of political resolution, good governance and employment generation to convert Jammu and Kashmir into a real welfare state,” he said.