SRINAGAR: The North Kashmir Member of Parliament, Er Rasheed, on Thursday said that he and his party would fully support the INDIA alliance if it assured him of bringing a resolution seeking the restoration of Article 370 in Parliament.
“Let me clarify this. If the INDIA alliance gives me written assurance that it will introduce a resolution in Parliament for the restoration of Article 370, I, along with my party leaders, will extend full support to it,” Er Rashid told a press conference.
Seeking support from the people to give him at least 40 seats in the upcoming elections in JK, the North Kashmir MP, who is out on interim bail until October 2, said that if the people gave him a powerful mandate, he would stage a sit-in outside Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence in Delhi. “Now you will ask me, what will we do there? We will do something unimaginable for the people of Kashmir,” the Awami Itehad Party (AIP) chief said.
He added that he was neither Pakistan’s agent nor India’s enemy. Launching an attack on National Conference vice president Omar Abdullah, Er Rashid said that the NC had released a detailed manifesto promising this and that. “Why couldn’t the party do the same when they were in power?” he asked.
He questioned how New Delhi could have hanged Muhammad Afzal Guru in Tihar without the signature of the then Chief Minister of JK. “It is easy to point fingers at me, but it is not easy to spend even two days in Tihar. There is a huge difference between spending over five years in Tihar prison and spending some time at the cozy SKICC,” Er Rashid said.
Taking a jibe at PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, Er Rashid said that it was the then-PDP patron Mufti Muhammad Sayeed who said that a vote for PDP was necessary to stop the BJP’s entry into JK. “Then what happened? The same PDP provided a launching pad for BJP, who bulldozed our dreams,” Er Rashid said.
He stated that his fight was against PM Modi’s “Naya Kashmir” narrative. “His narrative has miserably failed in Kashmir, as proven by the people of North Kashmir on June 4,” he said.
When asked whether he would support NC-Congress-PDP at some point, Er Rashid said: “Let these parties show me a concrete roadmap on how they can get back Article 370.” —(KNO)
