Omar Abdullah's BIG claim: Jammu and Kashmir may not get statehood because the BJP lost the assembly elections

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Wednesday said that an impression was developing in the Union Territory that its statehood will not be restored as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could not win assembly elections last year.

Abdullah said the BJP was the only party that opposed to statehood restoration. "Sometimes it looks like people of Jammu and Kashmir will not get statehood because the BJP lost the elections. This is an injustice because nowhere was it said that statehood will be restored only if the BJP wins," Abdullah told media outside his private office in Srinagar on September 24.

The erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir was reorganised into the Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh following the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019.

"If there is opposition to the restoration of statehood, it is coming only from the BJP," he said.

Abdullah said the biggest challenge before his 11-month-old government is that Jammu and Kashmir is not a state. "The way the people were promised and the Supreme Court was informed, we expected it to be a three-step process: first delimitation, then elections, followed by restoration of statehood," the chief minister said.

In August this year, marking the sixth anniversary of abrogation of Article 370, Abdullah wrote to the presidents of 42 political parties, including Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, urging them to press the Centre to bring legislation in the then ongoing Monsoon Session Parliament session to restore statehood to Jammu and Kashmir.

"Profound and unsettling" precedent

Terming it as an issue that goes beyond regional interests and touches the very core of the country's Constitutional values and democratic ethos, Abdullah was then quoted by the news agency saying that downgrading a state to a Union Territory sets a "profound and unsettling" precedent and is a "constitutional red line" that "must never be crossed".

"The delimitation happened, elections were conducted and people enthusiastically participated in the polls. It was bad luck for the BJP that they did not win the polls, but people cannot be punished for that," he said on Wednesday

(With PTI inputs)