Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Aug 12: National Conference has said that Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti was hand-in-glove with the BJP and other affiliates of the RSS in concerted efforts to strike down Article 35-A and revoke the State’s Special status.
In a statement issued here, NC general secretary Ali Muhammad Sagar and Provincial President Nasir Aslam Wani said that Mehbooba Mufti’s `wishy-washy’ claim of getting an alleged “assurance” from the Prime Minister stood exposed as a brazen lie by senior BJP leaders who have gone on record to say that there has been no change in BJP’s total and complete opposition to Article 35-A and Article 370.
“Post Mehbooba Mufti’s meeting with the Prime Minister, senior BJP functionaries have made it abundantly clear that BJP will continue to actively seek ways and means to strike down Article 35-A and there had been no change in their stand on the issue. This has yet again exposed Mehbooba Mufti and her party and their inexhaustible reservoir of lies”, the senior NC leaders said in the statement.
The NC leaders further said that Mehbooba Mufti’s Government was being used as a political vehicle for the constitutional erosion of J&K’s special status. “It is Mehbooba Mufti and PDP who have facilitated this assault on Article 35-A. PDP’s ‘Agenda of the Alliance’ has been thrown into the dustbin by the BJP. BJP has formally distanced itself from every single promise made by both parties in the document. It is ridiculous and laughable that Mehbooba Mufti still refers to this disowned, abandoned and meaningless scam of a document”, the senior NC leaders added.
“What was the State Government doing till the precise moment the Attorney General of India refused to file a counter affidavit to the PIL against 35-A? If PDP has in fact managed to get BJP to agree on a ‘status-quo’ on J&K’s special status (as stated in their ‘Agenda of the Alliance’), why didn’t the Central Government go on record to defend Article 35-A? The Attorney General rather said the Central Government was in favour of a ‘larger debate’ on the issue. That statement in itself exposes PDP’s hypocrisy”, the NC leaders added.
The NC leaders asked Mehbooba Mufti to stop fooling the people of the State and come clean on her active role in this elaborate and pre-meditated plan to rob the State of its special status and identity.