SRINAGAR: J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah and NC president Farooq Abdullah, along with party MLAs, left for New Delhi Saturday to hold a protest at Jantar Mantar on July 20 for restoration of statehood, even though police permission for the sit-in was yet to come.Omar told TOI that his party was talking to Delhi Police to grant permission for the protest.PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti said her party would not join the protest unless the restoration of Article 370 was also included in the demands, while jailed Baramulla MP Engineer Rashid announced that he would observe a one-day hunger strike in solidarity and would march barefoot to Parliament on July 21.Responding to Farooq’s invite to join the protest, Mehbooba, in a letter to him on Saturday, said the “half-hearted demands” for restoration of statehood “echo and legitimise BJP’s odious narrative of relegating Article 370 to the back burner”.However, NC spokesperson Tanvir Sadiq, alluding to calls by PDP, Peoples Conference and others to include the restoration of Article 370 in the protest’s agenda, said “those seeking to make statehood contingent upon resolving every other constitutional issue risk giving its opponents the perfect excuse to delay it indefinitely”.
