Kashmir neither Indian property nor integral part: Farooq Abdullah

SRINAGAR: Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah has said that Kashmir is not the property of “anybody’s father” to be inherited by India nor it is its integral part.

In a statement issued on Friday, he taunted the Indian government saying Kashmir was not a personal property to be inherited. He questioned India’s claim on Kashmir and said that it was not its paternal property. “Kya yeh tumare baap ka hai (Is this your fathers’ property?),” Abdullah was quoted as saying by the News 18 website.

Addressing a function in the Chenab Valley in the presence of his son Omar, Farooq made the statement while referring to parliament’s referring to Parliament’s standing resolution on Kashmir. “Valley is is not personal property of India so that it could make a claim over it like an inherited property of forefathers,” Abdullah was quoted as saying.

“Pakistan is one of the stakeholders (of the Kashmir issue) which even the government of India has accepted,” he said, adding that the government would have no option but to start talks with Pakistan so that the “atrocities through which people of Jammu and Kashmir are undergoing will come to an end.”

Farooq Abdullah aid that autonomy Kashmir was the solution to end the nearly seven-decade old major problem between India and Pakistan. “Borders cannot be changed but these can be made irrelevant and soft for people-to-people exchange and opening new vistas of trade and commerce for overall economic prosperity of the region. “We bat for autonomy to both sides of Kashmir and converting LoC-IB as soft border,” said Abdullah.

Earlier on Sunday, Farooq Abdullah, referring to the continuing disturbances between India and Pakistan, said that both the sides needed to talk to each other. “War cannot bring solution, talks can,” Abdullah said.