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Rahul, Priyanka attend meet at Congress war room over Article 370
The Congress had summoned all its state leaders to Delhi to explain the party’s line on scrapping special status for Jammu and Kashmir, a move designed to ensure that party leaders do not speak in different voices any longer.
Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra attended a meeting held at the party’s war room at 15 Gurudwara Rakab Ganj Road in Delhi.
The Congress had summoned all its state leaders to Delhi to explain the party’s line on scrapping special status for Jammu and Kashmir, a move designed to ensure that party leaders do not speak in different voices any longer, said a senior party functionary familiar with the development.
The party has faced some awkward moments over the past two days after several leaders appeared to welcome the government’s effort to push revocation of the Article 370 through Parliament.
Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said those who supported erasing the constitutional safeguard for J&K were neither familiar with the history of Kashmir nor the Congress.
But the Congress was admittedly caught off guard by the central government which introduced two proposals to scrap special status and split the Himayalan state into two union territories.
In Parliament, the Congress opposed the legislation. But it was only after Parliament had sealed the fate of the twin proposals that the party’s top decision making body, the Congress Working Committee, met on Tuesday night at the Congress headquarters. The revocation of the special status was already a done deal by then.
Around the same time that the Congress was fine-tuning its position to put out a cohesive stand on the Centre’s move, President Ram Nath Kovind signed a presidential order to end Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.
