KL NEWS NETWORK
SRINAGAR
A day after the High Court Jammu on Friday stayed the order of its single Bench, which had directed the state government to hoist the State flag at par with the national Flag on government buildings and official vehicles, the petitioner, Abdul Qayoom Khan, said that he will carry on the fight for the State Flag.
“I will continue to fight the case as I have trust in judiciary and justice system of the state,” he said.
Claiming that he does not have any political intention in pleading the case about State Flag in the court, Abdul Qayoom Khan, a retired Indian Forest Service, who had filed the writ petition in the Srinagar High Court in 2013, said that the Flag was a symbol of Kashmiri nationalism.
“I am not a politician. Nor do I comment on the political parties about their standing on the status of the State’s flag. Political parties are doing politics over the Flag for their own agenda. I am pleading the case as a citizen of Jammu and Kashmir to protect the Flag which is the symbol of Kashmiri nationalism, identity, sovereignty and cultural identity,” Khan told reporters here.
Appealing the Bar Association of Kashmir “not to sleep on the issue”, he disclosed that the lawyers’ body refused to contest the Flag petition in the Srinagar High Court in 2013, when “I requested them”.
“Bar refused to contest the case stating that they did not believe in the constitution of India. But the same Bar sent a lawyers’ delegation to contest a court’s decision on Article 35 (A). I appeal Bar to reconsider their decision and support me legally,” he said.
On the stay order decision, the petitioner said that he has trust in the state judiciary and judges “know the truth and they will uphold” the original judgment of the Single Bench of the High Court about the constitutional status of the State Flag, which “is soaked with the blood of martyrs of July 31, 1931”.
He said that he filed the petition on the High Court after “I observed that the constitution of Jammu and Kashmir is being undermined by the legislators and minister b y not hoisting the state flag”.
The controversy about the Flag erupted after a Division Bench of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court in Jammu on Friday stayed the order of its single Bench, which had directed the state government to hoist the State flag at par with the national Flag on government buildings and official vehicles.
The order came on a special leave petition filed by the BJP national secretary, Farooq Ahmad Khan, who had challenged the single bench order in the Jammu wing of the J&K high Court. (KNS)
