SRINAGAR: Former chief minister and National Conference Vice President, Omar Abdullah on Tuesday said that elections are the right of the people and he won’t beg anybody to hold them.
Talking to the media persons at Nawa-e-Subah, Omar said that it is up to the Election Commission to take a call on the conduct of polls in Jammu and Kashmir. “We are not beggars, we too have self-respect and won’t bow down to beg for the assembly polls in Jammu & Kashmir,” he said.
He added that the Chief Election Commission has itself claimed that there is a political vacuum in J&K, but they are not doing anything to address it.
“Election Commission should answer this, we want to hear from them. If there is any pressure on the Election Commission, then they should say that there is pressure on us and we cannot conduct the elections,” he said.
Pertinently, J&K has been without an elected government since June 19, 2018, when the BJP-PDP coalition government ended after the BJP withdrew its support to the coalition government. The assembly polls were last held in November 2014 in which PDP bagged 28 seats followed by BJP 25 seats while National Conference and Congress won from 15 and 12 assembly seats respectively.
Reacting to the statement of the Army officer, wherein he stated that the time is not apt to withdraw the troops from the Valley, Omar said that they also believe that the situation is not good. “The militancy has erupted from the areas where the militancy was eliminated completely. The Army officer is right in saying that the situation is not good here,” he said. (KNO)
