Rubbishing the claim of the NC that in 1952 the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru and Wazir-e-Azam of J&K Sheikh Abdullah signed what it calls “Delhi Agreement” that granted greater autonomy to the state, Prof Hari Om, Political Advisor to State BJP President Jugal Kishore Sharma, Thursday asked the NC leadership to make public the so-called signed Delhi Agreement to enable the people to know the whole truth. He dismissed as highly misleading and communally-motivated the charge of the NC that the “constitutional relationship that had been assiduously been built by the leadership of J&K NC and agreement to this effect was signed in July 1952, was gradually destroyed by Delhi’s power elite itself” and said that neither Nehru nor any other leader in Delhi had not signed any agreement with the NC.
.“All the central laws were introduced in the state with the concurrence of the state government. The state was also brought under the ambit of Supreme Court, Auditor and Comptroller- General and Election Commission with the consent of the state government. Similarly, various Schedules of the Indian Constitution were introduced in the state with the concurrence of the state. There is not a single Central law that was introduced against the will of the state. The NC itself allowed New Delhi to introduce more than 15 Central laws to the state, including the one under which the life of the Assembly was extended from 5 to 6 years, after 1975, when Sheikh Abdullah was brought back to power by Indira Gandhi after bringing down the Mir Qasim-led Congress government,” said Prof Hari Om. He also disclosed that Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather had himself admitted in the late 1990s during a seminar on autonomy at SKICC in the presence of almost all the NC ministers, including CM Farooq Abdullah, and all MLAs and MLCs, that “there existed no signed Delhi Agreement”. Abdul Rahim Rather had said that both Nehru and Sheikh had made a particular statement in July 1952 in the Lok Sabha and J&K Constituent Assembly, respectively, and it was not an agreement.
.Prof Hari Om cautioned the NC and other Kashmiri leaders, who are being backed to the hilt by the Congress for vote-bank politics, not to mislead the people of the state for petty political reasons and, instead, focus on democratic and economic issues so that the people feel that they are part of the system. He said the days of divisive and emotive politics are over and what the people want is a government that delivers and not indulge in rabble-rousing.