Srinagar: Reacting to PDP senior leader Altaf Bukhari’s statement that both PDP and National Conference should form a government in unison, National Conference said that the party had unilaterally offered support to PDP after 2014 elections which they declined. “Our party is not after power and chair, the apprehensions on our part about BJP being in power stand vindicated today,” said National Conference chief spokesperson Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi in a statement issued here.
“If anybody wants to join, the doors of JKNC are open to anyone who seeks to strengthen Art 370 and Art 35 A,” he said.
He also rejected the jibes of BJP general secretary Ram Madhav as an attempt to conceal the failures of BJP led central government to normalize the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.
Rubbishing the BJP statement, party chief spokesperson Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi maintained that BJP is itself in liaison with former extremists and thus sans the moral authority to make uncouth and false allegations against National Conference. “Most candidates that BJP has given tickets to in upcoming ULB elections come from fringe and have shady backgrounds. And they have the audacity to question our integrity,” he said.
He asserted that such statements by BJP leadership show how ignorant and confused they are about the prevailing ground situation in the state.
Ruhullah maintained that NC hasn’t made any surrender before anybody and that it has lost scores of its functionaries since the onset of militancy. “History bears witness to the fact that NC has never been an aggressor. It has suffered and suffered fatally during the last three decades. Thousands of our workers, leaders have fallen to bullets of militants in all these years.”
He said that the party’s rank and file endorse the recent working group recommendations and will abide by the decision of not participating in upcoming ULB and Panchayat elections. “The BJP will be given befitting answer by the people and the sparse polling will definitely ensure that that JKNC was definitely not in the fray,” he said.
Taking a dig at Ram Madhav’s comments, Ruhullah said that National Conference doesn’t believe in violence and has continued its struggle through peaceful means. “The brutal mass lynching throughout the country reveal who supports the violence, it is the RSS –BJP combine that uses coercion and violence to grind its own axe not us.”
