Announce statehood before J&K polls: Azad
JAMMU: Senior Congress leader and former chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Monday evening urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah to expeditiously complete delimitation of assembly constituencies and announce statehood to Jammu and Kashmir before holding elections. At the allparty meeting on June 24, Modi had assured early delimitation followed by assembly polls and statehood at an ‘apt time’.
“Our request is that the assurance given by the PM and Amit Shah at the all-party meeting should be implemented soon. For the past four years, there is no elected representative in J&K. Hence, the UT is lagging behind in development, education, health and other key sectors,” he said before leaving for Delhi on Monday evening. He said L-G Manoj Sinha’s administration cannot substitute for elected representatives.
“There is no MLA or assembly today... the ideal situation in any democracy is to have elections. Bureaucracy is not meant for public dealing. Their job is indoor. Outdoor is for elected representatives, which is not the case in J&K for the past threeand-a-half-years,” he added.
He reiterated the five demands of Congress—expeditiously completing the process of delimitation of assembly constituencies followed by statehood, which he said “can be done in a single day” and then conducting assembly elections.
“We demand safeguarding land and jobs besides dignified return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits,” he said.
On what changed after the PM’s all-party meeting, he said, “Delimitation panel came into action. It didn’t move out in the last one-and-a-half-year but it did immediately after the meeting. The panel expedited its work, visited J&K and met delegations. We hope statehood will be announced before holding elections,” he added.