The National Conference legislative party will meet on Thursday to elect its leader as party president Farooq Abdullah maintains that his son Omar Abdullah will be the first minister of the Union Territory.
The NC on Tuesday emerged as the single largest party with 42 seats as the results of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly polls were declared. The party comfortably formed the government as its alliance with the Congress and the CPI(M) secured 49 seats in the 95-member house.
“The National Conference legislative party will meet tomorrow at half past 12 to elect its leader,” said the party’s vice president.
Omar Abdullah said that the NC legislative party meeting will be followed by a meeting of the alliance partners to elect the alliance leader in the House of Representatives.
“Then we will go to the Raj Bhavan to raise our demands for the government’s appointment and ask the LG to set a time for swearing in,” Omar Abdullah said, adding, “We hope the new government will be in place in the next few days”.
However, NC president Farooq Abdullah asserted his supremacy over the selection of the person to lead the government.
Reacting to his son’s claim that the alliance will decide the chief minister, the NC patriarch said, “Whatever I have decided, only that will happen”.
Farooq Abdullah said the objective of the NC-Congress government was to minimize the differences between the two Union Territories and build trust among Hindus.
In a clear reference to the BJP, he said, “We have to minimize the differences created between Jammu and Kashmir. Our effort is to make the Hindus there have confidence in us that we will think about them in the same way as Kashmir”.
“We will not differentiate between the two. So what if they don’t vote (for us). It is our duty to resolve the issue,” Abdullah told reporters here.
Meanwhile, the Awami Ittehad Party led by Sheikh Abdul Rashid alias Engineer Rash id attacked Omar Abdullah for remaining silent on the restoration of Article 370 after the election victory.
“They seem to have run away from the core issues of this election campaign and have now started praising Narendra Modi and his government,” an AIP spokesperson said in a statement.
Omar Abdullah, in several media interactions on Wednesday, said that hoping to return Article 370 from those who seized it would be “stupid”, but his party will keep the issue and continue to raise it.
“Our political stance will not change. We have never said that we will be silent about Article 370 or that Article 370 is not an issue for us now,” said Abdullah when asked what the party’s stance on the matter is after the government.
“We will continue to talk about this and hope that tomorrow there will be a change of government in the country, there will be a new setup that we can discuss and get something for JK,” Abdullah added.
Earlier today, Omar Abdullah said that the NC-Congress government will pass a resolution demanding the restoration of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in its first cabinet meeting.
“After the government is formed, I hope that in the first cabinet meeting, the cabinet will give a resolution that pleases the Center to restore the status of the state. The government will then send the resolution to the prime minister,” he said.
The former minister hopes that the government in Jammu and Kashmir will run smoothly unlike in Delhi.
“There is a difference between us and Delhi. Delhi was never a state. No one promised to make Delhi a state. Jammu and Kashmir was a state before 2019. We have been promised statehood by the prime minister, home minister and other senior ministers who said that three steps will be taken in JK – delimitation, election and state.
“Delimitation has happened, the election has now ended as well. So, only statehood needs to be restored,” he said.
Asked how important coordination between the new Jammu and Kashmir government and the Center was, the NC leader said nothing could be achieved by confrontation with New Delhi.
“The government must be formed first. This question should be submitted to the chief minister. There should be good relations with New Delhi… we cannot solve any problem by confrontation with the Centre.
“You will not accept BJP’s politics, nor will BJP accept our politics. We will continue to fight BJP, but it is not a compulsion to fight the Centre,” he said.
(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from the feed of syndicated news agency – PTI)
