A day after triggering a political storm by claiming that Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) will remain with Pakistan, former Union Minister and three-time Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah on Saturday raked up another controversy by raising a question mark on the capability of the Indian armed forces to defend the people of Jammu & Kashmir against the terrorists.
“How much can the Army defend usIJ Even if the entire Indian Army comes here (Kashmir) even then they will not be able to defend us against the terrorists. There is only one way and that is to talk to them,” Abdullah told reporters on the sidelines of an interactive session with civil society.
The former Chief Minister also defended his statement that POK belonged to Pakistan and that India should be content with Jammu & Kashmir, saying that both nations do not have the courage to take each others’ territories.
“Farooq Abdullah will say this again and again. Not for the last 15 years but ever since I have entered politics, I have never felt that these two sides can be united. Neither do we have the courage to take their territory, nor do they have the courage to take ours,” he said.
“We are also a nuclear power; they are also a nuclear power,” he added.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sought an apology from Abdullah. “Probably Farooq Abdullah is either suffering from amnesia or deliberately raking up the settled issue in order to remain in news for his political survival,” BJP spokesperson Virender Gupta said adding, “Abdullah must apologise to the nation.”
Union Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh also flayed Abdullah for his remark. “How did the National Conference leader forget that when Indian Parliament unanimously passed the resolution in 1994 stating that the only outstanding dispute with Pakistan was about the PoK and how to reclaim it, his party MP had supported that resolution,” Singh told reporters on the sidelines of a function at Kathua in Jammu & Kashmir.
Abdullah said, “They say there is a resolution in Parliament; but tell me what the Parliament has done so far to reclaim that partIJ”