Farooq suggests ‘joint family’ solution to Kashmir issue

SRINAGAR:National Conference (NC) president and former Union Minister Farooq Abdullah today said autonomy for the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, including the region under Pakistan’s control, and a porous Line of Control would result in a “happy situation” and described it as a “joint family” solution.

Farooq Abdullah in Srinagar

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, December 2

National Conference (NC) president and former Union Minister Farooq Abdullah today said autonomy for the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, including the region under Pakistan’s control, and a porous Line of Control would result in a “happy situation” and described it as a “joint family” solution.

Farooq said if Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) becomes Pakistan’s region with a “similar autonomy that we have” and borders become easy and accessible for everybody it would lead to a “happy situation” and settle “many problems of India and Pakistan”.

“Everybody from here can have access to that place and everybody from that Kashmir can have access to this place. So we can trade. Our boys can marry girls from there and their boys can marry girls from here. It will be like a joint family,” the NC patron told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.

Farooq said the “only trouble” in implementing the solution was that the “shops of those who want this trouble in Jammu and Kashmir to continue will close down”.

He said the NC had no problem in accepting any other solution that created good relations between India and Pakistan.

Responding to criticism about his earlier statement that Pakistan will hold on to its side of Kashmir and India will retain this side of Kashmir, Farooq said former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had also suggested it when he travelled to Pakistan.

“He (Vajpayee) had suggested to him (then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif) to keep that (Kashmir) and we keep this,” Farooq said, adding that there is no other solution.

“If they have any other solution and they think they can occupy that (Kashmir) with military force, why are they not doing it?” he said.

“I do not see any other solution. We (India) do not have the power to take back that part and they (Pakistan) do not have the power to take this part,” he said.

The NC leader said Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers met in Paris because there was “no other solution”. “We had so many wars. Did that solve our problems?” he asked.