Dear Editer,
What is more significant in the PM Narendra Modi’s April 12 Udhampur address?
Assembly elections will soon be held in J&K and UT of J&K will get state status?
Or
“Congress, NC, PDP and all other parties want to take J&K back to those old days and no one has caused as much damage to J&K as these family-run parties have done. Here political parties mean of the family, by the family and for the family”.
I think the second statement is politically more significant. It means he only reiterated what the Modi Government said on August 5, 2019, when it abrogated J&K’s special status and broke the 173-year-old J&K into two UTs.
The first was just a political state, which should not be taken on its face value. I firmly believe PM Modi will not allow creation of a situation leading to retransfer of state power to the parties he referred to. He knows it. Hence, possibility of assembly elections and restoration of statehood is too remote.
Time has finally come to apply the R Venkatraman’s solution: statehood to Jammu, UT to Ladakh, which it already has become under PM Modi’s leadership, and deal with Kashmir separately.
Prof Hari Om