Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah praised former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Tuesday, saying that if his vision for Jammu and Kashmir had been fully followed, the region would have been in a much better place today.
“What can I say about the late Vajpayee? He was a great visionary,” said Abdullah in the assembly during obituary reference on the second day of the five-day assembly session that began on November 4.
“Vajpayee was a great leader who started the Lahore bus service and even visited Minar-e-Pakistan,” he said. “He constantly worked to improve ties with Pakistan, stressing friends can change, but neighbours cannot.”
He said Vajpayee’s slogan of "Jamhooriyat, Kashmiriyat, and Insaniyat", was visionary.
He credited Vajpayee for opening cross-border roads to connect divided parts of Jammu and Kashmir.
"The idea behind opening these roads was to connect people and civil society, to build personal relationships,” he said.
Expressing regret that Vajpayee’s path had been abandoned, he said that instead of bringing people together, more divisions were being created.
"If Vajpayee's roadmap on J&K had been followed in spirit, we would not be where we are now," he said, hinting at the BJP’s Article 370 move that stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its statehood and limited autonomy in 2019.
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Abdullah also reflected on the J&K assembly’s autonomy resolution, which the Vajpayee-led cabinet initially returned.
“Tarigami sahab praised Vajpayee sahab and said he returned the autonomy resolution passed by J&K assembly,” he said. “Later, Vajpayee realised that the decision had been made in haste and appointed the then law minister Arun Jaitley to talk with the NC leadership about it.”
Sadly, he said, things did not move forward after Vajpayee's passing.
He said of all the deceased legislators, he feels more for Devender Singh Rana.
He called Rana a close friend with whom he spent 20 years of his life. “I didn’t know he was gravely ill. If I had known, I might have tried to mend fences with him,” he said.
He also noted that today’s tributes included lawmakers from Ladakh and Kargil, saying this might be the last time the J&K assembly would honour members from these areas, as Ladakh is no longer part of Jammu and Kashmir.