Farooq rakes up Modi’s snub to Mufti in 2015

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, April 27

National Conference president Farooq Abdullah on Saturday said he would have told Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “go to hell” if he would have been rebuked me at a rally like former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

Farooq cited the 2015 incident in Srinagar when Mufti Sayeed, the then Chief Minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government, had offered an advice to the Prime Minister to offer friendship and dialogue to Pakistan. The Prime Minister had immediately snubbed Sayeed at the rally and said he did not need advice or analysis from anyone regarding Kashmir.

“When he (Sayeed) said it is important to talk to Pakistan, he (Modi) told him I don’t need anyone’s advice. If I would have been the Chief Minister, I would have told him you go to hell and I would have left,” Farooq said at a rally in Kulgam district on Saturday. Kulgam, which is part of the Anantnag parliamentary constituency, will go to the polls on Monday.

The former Chief Minister also criticised PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti and said legislative powers of the state were encroached upon during her tenure.

National Conference vice-president Omar Abdullah, who addressed another rally in Kulgam, said if anyone questioned the validity of Article 370 — that guarantees the state’s special status — it would also “open the question of accession”.

“When the state became part of the country, certain conditions were set. If that decision of Article 370 is wrong, then the decision of accession is also wrong,” he said.

Omar also said the gravest danger faced by the state was not from the militants or Pakistan but from those who were seeking to undo the state’s special status.