Suhail Bhat
SRINAGAR Sept 25: National Conference president Dr Farooq Abdullah today said the situation in Ladakh has turned dangerous and urged the centre to take the path of dialogue immediately.
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Abdullah, during a press conference in Srinagar, said, “This is a border state. China is sitting on us. A lot of our land is under their control. Such a thing happening there is dangerous for our country. Please try to solve this problem. And take the path of dialogue quickly. Do not wait for the fire to start again.”
He said a very serious issue has emerged in Ladakh, especially in Leh, where children and families have been protesting for the past five years in silence, demanding the Sixth Schedule and statehood. He said activist Sonam Wangchuk was their leader who walked from Leh to Delhi to tell the government to look at their problems. “He used the Gandhian method. He did not protest. But then the children felt that the promises they had made to us for the past five years, that we will get jobs, we will get facilities here, and we will be able to move forward, all those promises turned hollow. And the result of that was that they could not take it anymore,” he said.
Abdullah stressed that the unrest was not instigated from outside. “I do not think there is anyone behind this. Whenever something happened here, they (the central government) said that it was coming from outside. It is not from outside. It is the voice of the people there. It is the voice of the hearts. They (center) should not wait any longer. They should learn a lesson from this,” he said.
He said similar promises were made to Jammu and Kashmir about statehood after delimitation and elections, but “it has been 11 months; no one is giving us statehood. They (the center) should learn a lesson from Ladakh.”
The NC president rejected the BJP’s charge that Congress was behind the violence. “They are the ones who have been running the government there since 2019. So where did Congress come from? Congress cannot assemble 5,000 or even 10 people there. This is not Congress. This is the voice of the people there. Do not point fingers at anyone. In fact, talk about solving the problem,” he said.
On allegations that Sonam Wangchuk’s speeches were provocative, Abdullah said, “All these are wrong statements. Wangchuk has never left the path of Gandhi. But today our children have put Wangchuk aside and said that this path will not work anymore. Now the path will work. So they have adopted the path. There is no Wangchuk in it. He is not involved in it.”
Asked whether the unrest could spread to Kashmir, Abdullah said, “The National Conference will never take that path in which our children died. We never wanted that. I do not want anyone from J&K to be killed.”
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