NC compromising on everything for power: Mehbooba

The Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) President Mehbooba Mufti has said the National Conference President Dr Farooq Abdullah’s candid admission that despite trying hard his party couldn’t get its hands on the Ladakh Parliamentary seat, shows how helplessly NC is compromising everything before the Congress just for the sake of power.

Addressing a series of election rallies in Anantnag-Pulwama Parliamentary Constituency today (April 13), she said: “Paradoxically, in the same press conference Sunday where Dr Abdullah expressed his helplessness to get even the Ladakh seat from Congress, he bragged of his MPs talking about autonomy in the Parliament, if elected.”

Mehbooba wondered that if a party which claims to represent all the regions of the State, is not able to bargain for one Parliament seat with Congress, whom its leaders are trying to befool now by saying that its MP’s would demand autonomy, that the party has dumped since. “Everybody knows how contemptuously NC treated its autonomy resolution in 2000 when the party had five MPs including a minister in the Central Government during the NDA regime,” she said and added that it was NC’s mentor L K Advani who, in his book later, spilled the beans on how NC bargained for continuation of Omar Abdullah in the Central Government over pressing for even a discussion on autonomy resolution.

PDP President said outright rejection of the autonomy resolution by the NDA Government was not only a rebuff to NC but amounted to an insult to the State Legislature that had passed it with a huge majority. “But just to save Omar’s job as a junior minister and keep Farooq Abdullah’s ambition to become Vice President of the country alive, NC to its eternal shame did not protest even meekly,” she said and added that now seeing the ground fast slipping underneath them, the NC leaders have again started raising the autonomy bogey just political purposes.

Welcoming Dr Abdullah’s statement hinting towards his party’s support for the people’s demand for reduction of troops and revocation of the Special Powers, Mehbooba said the compulsions of the situation in the latest observations of the NC Patron on the issue can clearly be seen between the lines.

“The statements of Dr Abdullah and Omar Abdullah on the issue of troop cut and AFSPA revocation seem to be the party’s political necessity after having initially opposed the demand tooth and nail and even ridiculing the PDP for raising its voice on troop reduction,” the PDP president added.