
Srinagar: The former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Sunday termed as “not surprising” the separatists reaction to his father and National Conference president Farooq Abdullah’s statement echoing Pakistan Prime Minister remarks, ruling out independent Jammu and Kashmir.
“It’s not surprising that the Separatist camp has chosen to react to what the @JKNC_President has said & not to what the Pak PM said,” Omar wrote on twitter.
Chairman of Jammu Kashmir liberation front (JKLF) Yasin Malik on weekend ridiculed Farooq’s statement against “freedom” of Jammu and Kashmir.
“Farooq Abdullah has always played non-serious and selfish politics. Kashmiris never take his words and personality seriously,” Malik had said in a statement.
Rejecting the idea of autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir, Malik said that “Kashmiris have not sacrificed thousands of lives for a fragile, absurd and ridiculous autonomy under which a prime minster of time who luckily was Farooq Abdullah sahib’s own father was handcuffed by an ordinary police man and thrown into jail for 11 long years”.
Earlier Farooq, the former three-time Chief Minister, said that independent J&K was viable as it was surrounded by three nuclear powers in India, China and Pakistan. “They have atom bomb, we have nothing except Allah’s name,” Farooq, who is also member parliament, had said.
Earlier this week, Omar, who is also National Conference’s working president, took a dig at Hurriyat Conference and urged its leaders to spell out their stand on Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi Abbasi’s statement similar statement on independent Kashmir.
“Here’s a question for the Hurriyat leaders in light of your PM’s categorical statement – what was the last 30 years of turmoil all about? Will you boycott the Pak High Commission now?” Omar had said
Speaking at a recent conference on the ‘Future of Pakistan 2017’ at the London School of Economics, Abbasi said, “The idea (of independent Kashmir) is often floated around but has no reality.”
“There is no support for the demand for an independent Kashmir,” he had said.