Sheikh Abdullah image replaced on cop medals

SRINAGAR: The Jammu & Kashmir administration’s decision to remove the image of National Conference (NC) founder and former prime minister of J&K, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, from the police medal for gallantry and meritorious service has triggered a massive row with the NC saying that “a prefix can be erased but an idea lives on”.

The administration has decided to replace the picture with the national emblem. In January 2020, the government renamed ‘Sher-iKashmir Police Medals’ as ‘Jammu & Kashmir Police Medals’. “It is hereby ordered that in modification to the Para 4 of the Jammu & Kashmir Police Medal Scheme, the Sher-i-Kashmir Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah embossed on one side of the medal shall be replaced with ‘The National Emblem of Government of India’,” said an order by addiadding tional chief secretary and principal secretary, home department, R K Goyal, on Monday.

The other side of the medal, inscribed with the J&K state emblem, will now be inscribed as “Jammu and Kashmir Police Medal for Gallantry” and “Jammu and Kashmir Police Medal for Meritorious Service” in case of gallantry or meritorious medal, as the case may be.

Chief spokesperson of NC, Tanvir Sadiq, said that a prefix can be erased but an idea lives on. “As John F Kennedy said, ‘A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death... Sher-e-Kashmir was, is and will always be the only Sher-e-Kashmir,” he tweeted.

People’s Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti said the move reflects poorly on the people doing this. “After 70 years if someone wants to remove his identity what can be said of those persons. It is their mental bankruptcy, nothing else...,” she said.