Jammu & Kashmir: Congress Slams Ghulam Nabi Azad For Saying Article 370 Not Coming Back

Azad at a rally in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) earlier this month said he would not mislead people by saying that he would bring back Article 370 as it needs a two-third majority in the Parliament. Article 370, which gave J&K its special status, was scrapped by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in August 2019.?

The Congress accused Azad of changing his stand on the Article 370 after quitting the party and said his "lies" on the issue should be exposed.

Azad quit Congress last month after being associated with the party for five decades. In his resignation letter, he had blasted Rahul Gandhi for being childish and immature. He had also said that a coterie of sycophants of Rahul run the party and senior leaders are sidelined.

Responding to a tweet by J&K Congress leader Ghulam Ahmad Mir asking if Azad had signed the Congress Working Committee (CWC) resolution following the Centre's move abrogating Article 370 provisions, Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh said, "Of course he did."

"I was sitting behind him in Parliament when he spoke the previous day against abolition of article 370. His lies should be exposed," said Ramesh on Twitter.

In an article in The Indian Express, senior Congress leader and former home minister P Chidambaram said that on August 5, 2019, the BJP government took the "extreme step" of abrogating the special status of J&K, dismembered the state and created two Union Territories — Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.

On the next day, the CWC convened an emergency meeting and adopted a resolution, he said.

He said, "All members of the CWC were convinced that the above steps were illegal and unconstitutional. Nothing that the government did on those two fateful days required a two-third majority of the members present and voting in either House.

"These questionable steps have been challenged in the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court holds any or all of the steps to be unconstitutional, the step(s) will be reversed. Alternatively, if another government replaced the Modi government, it is possible that the new government may reverse some or all of the steps. Mr Azad certainly knows all that."

Then, why did Azad say that a political party promising to restore Article 370 would be "telling lies" to the people, he asked.

The CWC in a resolution in 2019 had deplored the "unilateral, brazen and totally undemocratic" manner in which provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution were abrogated and the state of Jammu and Kashmir was bifurcated by the government into two Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh.

The resolution further stated that Article 370 is the Constitutional recognition of the terms of the Instrument of Accession between the State of Jammu and Kashmir and India.

"It deserved to be honoured until it was amended, after consultation with all sections of the people, and strictly in accordance with the Constitution of India," it had said.

(With PTI inputs)