The CM's pitch For Statehood

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah made a strong pitch for the restoration of statehood on Tuesday, saying now was the “appropriate time” for it. The use of ‘appropriate time’ is telling as this is the phrase recurrently used by the home minister Amit Shah in his frequent assurances about reinstating the J&K’s statehood. It is true that the Union Territory status has outlived whatever purpose it was meant to serve. The CM is right. If anything, the time to restore statehood has come long ago.

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Omar made a striking comparison between being the CM of a state and that of a union territory: when he served as chief minister of a state, officials would respond to instructions with ideas and solutions. Now, under the UT setup, those same officials respond with excuses.

However, the CM stressed that the reinstatement of statehood was just the starting point for reclaiming what the people of Jammu and Kashmir lost in 2019. In his own words, he termed the statehood “a prerequisite to start the process of reclaiming what the people have lost in the last six to seven years.”