- CM Abdullah leads protest in Delhi and demands IIOJK statehood.
- Police prevent protesters from organizing demonstrations in Delhi.
- BJP calls protests to divert attention from governance.
Hundreds of people led by the Chief Minister of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) shouted slogans and staged a protest in the capital Delhi on Monday demanding statehood for the region, seven years after it was converted into a federal territory.
Protesters were stopped by police from staging their demonstration, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said in a post on X, which had videos and photos of people holding placards and shouting slogans.
“This is just the beginning of our fight for statehood, our rights, our dignity and everything that was taken from us,” Abdullah said in the post.
In August 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked the occupied region’s partial autonomy, removing its state and dividing it into two federally controlled territories: Muslim-majority Kashmir with Hindu-dominated Jammu; and a Buddhist area in Ladakh.
The government has since said statehood to the disputed Himalayan region will be restored at “the appropriate time” but has not given a deadline.
Abdullah and his party, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, have said that statehood should be restored at the earliest as per the government’s promise.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party leaders say the protest is an attempt to divert attention from what they say are governance failures in Abdullah’s government.
