Ready for protest but won’t settle for statehood alone: Srinagar MP to Omar

Hours after Chief Minister Omar Abdullah called on Srinagar MP and NC leader Aga Ruhullah to lead a protest in Delhi for the restoration of statehood — similar to the recent demonstration by the MP over the reservation issue outside the CM’s residence — Ruhullah on Thursday said he is ready “to participate in such a protest”, but he cannot “sidestep from the fight for our special status and settle for the hollow promise of mere statehood”.

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Stating that after 2019, his political stance has been crystal clear, Ruhullah said, “At one of my earliest public gatherings in Budgam and then at other gatherings throughout Kashmir and also in my interviews after abrogation, I told my people that our fight must be for the restoration of 370 and the dignity it embodies for the people of Jammu & Kashmir.”

He said he has been informed about an urge and desire to protest for statehood in Delhi. “I am ready to participate in such a protest, and invite those prioritising statehood to organise it. I will also try to organise support from at least more than 100 MPs,” he said.

“I believe for them there is no better time than January to organise it, when India’s Constitution — the very document that enshrined our special status — was adopted,” he added.

He, however said, at the same time he “ought to remind that the abrogation of Article 370 was a calculated act of humiliation and a deep wound deliberately inflicted upon us.”

“The subsequent demotion to a Union Territory was a further attempt to impress upon us the indignity of the abrogation,” he said.

He said “abrogation was a political statement, a declaration that our sacrifices mean nothing, and that our future is theirs to dictate”.

“Given this betrayal, this calculated attempt to break our spirit and subjugate our will, I cannot, in good conscience, sidestep from the fight for our special status and settle for the hollow promise of mere statehood,” he said.