Hundreds join Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in demanding restoration of statehood seven years after occupied Kashmir was stripped of its special status.
NEW DELHI, India — Web Desk: Hundreds of people led by the chief minister of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) staged a protest in the Indian capital on Monday, demanding the restoration of statehood for the region, seven years after it was downgraded to a federal territory.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah led the demonstration, with protesters shouting slogans and holding posters. Police stopped the group from staging their planned demonstration, Abdullah said in a post on X that included videos and images of the gathering.
“This is only the beginning of our struggle for statehood, our rights, our dignity and everything that was taken away from us,” Abdullah wrote in the post.
Leaders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said the protest was an attempt to divert attention from what they described as governance failures of Abdullah’s administration.
In August 2019, Modi’s government revoked the occupied region’s partial autonomy, stripped it of statehood, and divided it into two federally controlled territories: Muslim-majority Kashmir combined with Hindu-dominated Jammu, and the Buddhist-majority territory of Ladakh.
The Indian government has said statehood will be restored to the disputed Himalayan region at an “appropriate time,” but it has not set a timeline for doing so.
Abdullah and his party, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, have repeatedly called for statehood to be restored at the earliest opportunity, in line with the government’s earlier commitments. Monday’s demonstration represented the latest push by Abdullah’s party to press New Delhi on the issue.
Abdullah indicated the Delhi protest would not be an isolated event, describing it as the start of a wider campaign. No further protest dates or plans have been announced by his party so far.
