Will restore Darbar Move if voted to power: Farooq Abdullah
Darbar Move was a bi-annual practice of shifting the seat of power to Jammu for six months during winters and moving it back to Srinagar for the remaining six months
National Conference president and former chief minister Farooq Abdullah on Thursday said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has ruined Jammu and Kashmir and that “if elected, NC would immediately restore the practice of Darbar Move”.
Darbar Move was a bi-annual practice of shifting the seat of power to Jammu for six months during winters and moving it back to Srinagar for the remaining six months.
Opposition parties, especially the National Conference (NC), the Congress, the Apni Party and the People’s Democratic Party have been promising revival of the practice, the suspension of which in 2021 has irked businesses and hit the economy.
Fielding media queries in Udhampur where he addressed an election rally for the party’s Udhampur East candidate Sunil Verma, Abdullah said, “If the NC-Congress government comes to power, we will restore Darbar Move. Stopping the practice has caused enormous loss to both the regions.”
“Maharaja, who introduced the practice, was not a madman. There was a relationship between Kashmir and Jammu but the BJP broke it. Go and ask the people of Jammu, how much they have suffered,” he added.
The Jammu and Kashmir high court had earlier observed “no legal justification or constitutional basis for Darbar Move practice.” The court, however, did not issue any direction to the state. The government took the decision on its own and shifted to e-governance for accessing official records.
Dogra ruler Maharaja Ranbir Singh made the arrangement of shifting the Darbar from Srinagar to Jammu in the 1870s to escape harsh winter in the Valley and the Jammu’s extreme heat in the summer.
‘BJP building castles in the air’
Rubbishing the BJP’s claims of forming the government in Jammu and Kashmir, Abdullah said, “The BJP is building castles in the air. Let’s see who sweeps the polls. First, they did nothing for Jammu… there are no jobs for the people with no contracts to them. Labourers have also been brought from outside. Go to the secretariat and see how many officials are there from Jammu. You will find DCs and SSPs from outside. BJP has ruined Jammu.”
“Are people of Jammu so dumb? Are they not capable? Their lands are being taken away. Tell me, which industry has been set up in Jammu,”he added.
Abdullah also referred to big institutions like IIT and AIIMS in Jammu saying, “Go and find out whose children are studying there and who are the teachers? Our people still have to go to Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Delhi. Terrorism has peaked in Jammu. The people of Jammu have to think.”
On the BJP’s allegations of three families that have ruined Kashmir, the NC president countered, “Who took terrorists to Kandahar and who released five terrorists in lieu of home minister’s daughter Rubaiyya Sayed. I had told them not to do it.”
Rubaiya Sayed, daughter of the then Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was kidnapped by terrorists in Srinagar in 1989. The then government headed by VP Singh of the Janata Dal party, with outside support from the BJP, had agreed to release the jailed terrorists.
“I told them that terrorists being released will ruin us and today they blame the NC and the Congress. Thank God that the NC was here and that’s why Jammu and Kashmir is with India. Had the NC not been here, we would have been part of Pakistan. We are a Muslim majority region and we would have gone with Pakistan but we chose Gandhi’s path,” he said.
Earlier, he said one nation, one poll would not work in a federal structure, adding, “If a government in a state falls, till the next election it will be under President’s rule. Then how will it work.”