National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah will be the president of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration and Peoples Democratic Party’s Mehbooba Mufti the vice president of the six-party grouping, a senior leader said on Saturday.
The announcement was made after a meeting of the members of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration at Mufti’s residence in Srinagar. NC vice president Omar Abdullah was also present at the meeting.
“A document will be prepared within a month via which we’ll present facts behind the lies that are being propagated. It’ll be a tribute to people of J&K who are being slandered,” Sajjad Lone of the Peoples Conference was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
The six parties –the National Conference (NC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peoples Conference (PC), Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI-M), Peoples Movement (PM) and Awami National Conference (ANC) — had come together earlier this month to form the alliance to peacefully seek the restoration of the erstwhile state’s special status and fight for the rights of the people in the restive region.
“We are anti-BJP, we are not anti-national,” Farooq Abdullah said after the meeting of People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration on Saturday. “It’s not an anti-national Jamat, our aim is to ensure that the rights of people of J&K and Ladakh are restored. Attempts to dividing us in the name of religion will fail. It’s not a religious fight,” he added.
CPI(M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami will the convenor of the alliance and Sajjad Lone has been named as the spokesperson. The leaders also adopted the flag of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir as its symbol. The alliance will come out with a white paper within a month on governance in Jammu and Kashmir over the past one year since the abrogation of Article 370, Lone told reporters after the meeting.
The leaders of the six parties had held their first meeting on October 15 following the release of Mufti from detention. This meeting was held at Farooq Abdullah’s residence in Srinagar. Abdullah had said that the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration will push for the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s constitutional position before August 5, 2019, when the region’s special status was revoked and it was split into two union territories.
“We shall struggle for the restoration of what was snatched from Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh. Ours is a constitutional battle, we want the government of India to return to the people of the state the rights they held before August 5, 2019,” said Abdullah.
