Srinagar: July 18: J&K Peoples Conference [JKPC] chairperson Sajad Gani Lone on Saturday hit out at Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s proposed Jantar Mantar sit-in, saying the Farooq Abdullah-led National Conference has failed to bring Statehood Resolution in the Legislative Assembly.
MLA Handwara questioned the timing and the motive behind Omar Abdullah’s call for a sit-in at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.
“The pre-August 5, 2019 status of Jammu and Kashmir, Article 370, Article 35A, and full statehood, remains paramount, with Article 370 the most important of the three,” Sajad told reporters in a press conference.
He recalled that in early August 2019, Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah had traveled to New Delhi “without taking other parties into confidence, only for a photograph with the Prime Minister to emerge the next day along with assurances that nothing was going to change, assurances undone within forty-eight hours when Article 370 was revoked.”
Lone said the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly may have lost its old powers but has not lost its representative character.
“The J&K Legislative Assembly remains the constitutional voice of the people. It is unacceptable that no statehood resolution had been passed in nearly two years, and that my own attempts to move such a resolution had been blocked by the Speaker on grounds that the matter was sub judice.”
He specifically cited an amendment he moved on February 3, 2025 during the Governor’s address, seeking to add a demand for the return of Article 370, 35A and statehood, which he said was rejected by voice vote with every NC member voting against it alongwith BJP leaders, a development he said went almost entirely unreported.
Lone’s central demand was that the government call an emergency session of the assembly, pass a resolution on statehood, and then send an all-party delegation — without theatrics — to meet the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.
Only if that route failed, he said, should Jantar Mantar even be considered, and his party would join at that stage. Bypassing the assembly and taking the issue straight to Delhi, he warned, would reduce the statehood question to a fight between the BJP and the opposition at the national level, stripping the people of Jammu and Kashmir of any real role in their own cause.
He said the JKNC protest may not be about statehood, but to bury the political narrative on Articles 370 and 35A, and special status.
