Why Mehbooba’s social gathering simply declined Omar’s Jantar Mantar invite | India Information
5 min learnUp to date: Jul 18, 2026 01:23 PM IST
Saying it will not be within the health of issues for the Peoples Democratic Occasion (PDP) to “take part in a protest whose raison d’être is solely and solely the demand for statehood”, former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti declined the Nationwide Convention’s invitation to hitch the Jantar Mantar protest.
Mufti mentioned an “sincere and significant political course of can solely start by addressing elementary points”.
Calling Article 370 the core difficulty, Mufti, in a letter to Nationwide Convention president Farooq Abdullahcalled for convening an all-party assembly to hunt the discharge of political prisoners and the revocation of the ban on socio-political organisations, together with Jamaat-e-Islami, as a primary step.
“It could be a grave injustice, a disservice, and a sheer betrayal to cut back the honourable aspirations of the folks of J&Okay to the petty, myopic, short-sighted, and detrimental demand for statehood alone,” Mufti mentioned in her letter to Abdullah. “Protesting in unison solely for statehood would solely legitimise and sanitise the unlawful act of revoking J&Okay’s particular standing and might be seen as a direct endorsement of August 5, the darkest day in our collective historical past”.
The Nationwide Convention is planning a sit-in at Jantar Mantar on July 20, the primary day of Parliament’s monsoon session, to press for restoration of statehood. All Nationwide Convention legislators and MPs will participate within the protest. NC MP Aga Ruhullah Mehdi, nevertheless, mentioned he had not been invited and wouldn’t be a part of a protest that asks for something wanting Article 370.
Mufti termed the demand for restoration of statehood with out concentrate on particular standing a whitewash. “Not solely does this half-hearted demand echo and legitimise the BJP’s odious narrative of relegating Article 370 to the again burner, however it additionally dangers whitewashing the unlawful and unconstitutional harakiri carried out in stealth on August 5, 2019,” she mentioned.
The overwhelming mandate that the NC earned was not merely to assist restore statehood, Mufti mentioned.
Had that been the case, the BJP and its proxies would have loved far better electoral success,” she mentioned.
Calling Jammu and Kashmir’s particular standing an emotive difficulty, Mufti accused the Nationwide Convention of normalising the constitutional modifications of August 5, 2019.
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“As Kashmir’s senior-most chief, I’m sure you realise not solely the emotive but additionally the sensible significance of Article 370 for our folks. That is exactly why Kashmir’s predominant regional events, together with the PDP and the Nationwide Convention, explicitly acknowledged the restoration of Article 370 as a core agenda of their manifestos for the 2024 elections,” she mentioned.
The NC assured the folks of this state that the Nationwide Convention would struggle to revive J&Okay’s particular standing and residuary powers, she mentioned.
“Individuals took you at your phrase, putting their religion within the NC’s manifesto and its promise of a peaceable battle for Article 370,” she mentioned. “But, even after two years of forming the federal government, I’ve witnessed with deep concern and fear how the NC has begun to normalise and whitewash the BJP’s agenda by decreasing J&Okay’s bigger political battle to the slim and diminishing narrative of statehood.”
She mentioned what’s much more worrying is that the NC authorities “has turn out to be not merely a mute spectator however, regrettably, equally complicit in disempowering coverage choices such because the abstract dismissal of presidency workers, harassment of Jamaat and its affiliated faculties, arbitrary detentions, the systematic purge of our wealthy literature, and the wanton destruction of J&Okay’s fragile surroundings all underneath the guise of improvement”.
Asking the Nationwide Convention to take a cue from the Ladakhi management, Mufti referred to as for the same train in Jammu and Kashmir.
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“We should rise above partisan politics and are available collectively to struggle for Article 370. Demanding something shorn of it will quantity to a shameful give up of our rights and dignity and unforgivable footnote that can condemn every one in every of us within the annals of J&Okay’s historical past,” she mentioned.
She added: “An sincere and significant political course of can solely start by addressing elementary points, together with calling for the discharge of political prisoners and in search of the revocation of the ban on socio-political organisations, together with Jamaat-e-Islami. Even the restoration of statehood can’t be handled as a one-time occasion, it requires sustained political effort and engagement, which Chief Minister Omar Abdullah Sahab ought to provoke”.
The PDP’s determination to not be part of the Jantar Mantar sit-in got here after the Sajad Lone-led Peoples Convention mentioned it will not be a part of the protest.
The Congress and the Communist Occasion of India have already pledged assist to the Nationwide Convention’s Jantar Mantar protest.
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Saying restoration of statehood is a folks’s difficulty and never that of any explicit political social gathering, All India Congress Committee basic secretary and south Kashmir MLA Ghulam Ahmad Mir appealed to different political events to hitch the protest.
“Congress has constantly opposed the selections taken on August 5, 2019 and has been elevating the demand for the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s constitutional rights and statehood at each accessible discussion board,” Mir mentioned. “Everybody ought to unite and lift a typical voice for the restoration of statehood”.
