Omar to BJP: “Is your nationalism for sale?”

Sharply reacting to the Union Minister of Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s remarks that “former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has exposed her proximity with separatists”, National Conference leader Omar Abdullah has questioned BJP’s nationalism and patriotism.

In a couple of tweets, Omar asked: “Are you saying you allied with a party & individual who has ties to separatists just for the sake of power? What does that make you people? Is your nationalism/patriotism for sale?”

Maintaining that Mehbooba supported ‘operation all-out’, NIA raids and arrests, he further said: “she opposed the lifting of AFSPA and facilitated RSS armed parades in Jammu. So how could she possibly be a separatist sympathiser now?”

At a press conference in Srinagar, the PDP chief Mehbooba said if the central government split her party to form new government in the state, it would create more Salahuddins and Yasin Maliks -- who were first to take arms after the 1987 elections were allegedly rigged.

Salahuddin, whose real name in Yousuf Shah, contested the election and Malik was his polling agent. However, it was alleged that the polls were rigged in favour of the National Conference-Congress coalition. Shah ended up heading the Hizbul Mujahideen militant group and Malik launched Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front

"Let me put this out here for all to remember not one new militant will be created with the break up of the PDP. People will not mourn the demise of a party created in Delhi only to divide the votes of Kashmiris," Omar said in a previous tweet, adding that “She (Mehbooba) must really be desperate if she is threatening the Centre with renewed militancy if PDP breaks up. She seems to have forgotten that militancy in Kashmir has already been reborn under her most able administration.”

Reacting to Mufti's statement, Naqvi earlier had said that Mufti with her statement was "trying to give oxygen to terrorists". He further alleged that "knowing or unknowingly she has only exposed her proximity to separatists."

BJP's central committee member GVL Narasimha Rao said Mufti's remarks were "very bizzare". Mufti, he said, "seems under tremendous pressure from her own party.

With IANS inputs