Calls it figment of imagination
Fayaz Bukhari
SRINAGAR, Apr 16: National Conference (NC) president and former Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah today accused former RAW chief A S Dulat of “cheap stunts” to boost the sales of his forthcoming book.
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Dismissing Dulat’s claims that the NC would have helped pass the proposal to abrogate the special status of the erstwhile State had it been taken into confidence, Abdullah said this was a “figment of imagination” of the author. Dulat’s book ‘The Chief Minister and the Spy’ is slated for release on April 18.
“Dulat’s book has come out – Chief Minister and a Spy – there are so many mistakes in it that I cannot even express, and it is regretful that if he calls me his friend, a friend cannot write such things,” the former Chief Minister said.
The NC chief pointed out that both he and his son, Omar Abdullah, had been put under arrest for several months at the time of the abrogation of Article 370. “We were detained because our stand against the abrogation of special status was well-known,” he said.
Abdullah said that he had taken the initiative to bring together all major political forces in Jammu and Kashmir and formed the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD).
The NC Chief ridiculed Dulat’s claim that the NC would have got a resolution passed in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly for the abrogation of Article 370.
“The claim in the book that the NC was planning to pass a resolution on the abrogation of the special status is merely a figment of the imagination of the author who claims to be my friend,” he said.
“A benchmark of common sense should have been adopted by the author while penning the so-called memoirs. He should have remembered that there was no Assembly in 2018 which could have been dissolved,” he added. Abdullah insisted that even if the Assembly had been in session, he would have never considered passing such a resolution.
“It is full of inaccuracies that, after a while, I thought I was reading a fiction and left it,” the NC president remarked.
The former Chief Minister also referenced a specific error where Dulat claimed to have advised him against having a large Cabinet in 1996, to say that he was “sworn in with 25 Ministers”, not a small number as suggested.
The NC chief dismissed Dulat’s portrayal of their relationship, particularly the claim that he frequently heeded the author’s advice.
“The author claims that Abdullah would always listen to his advice, which is yet another example of underestimating me. I am a man of my own mind, and I only decide. I am not anyone’s puppet,” he asserted.
Regarding Dulat’s claim that the NC wanted closer relations with the BJP, Abdullah strongly denied it.
“Dulat’s claim that the NC wanted to get close to the BJP is an absolute lie as I am not the one who will patch up with a party that is out and out to destroy my party,” he said.
“The worst is that he claims to be my friend, and as has been said, ‘Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart, and the wound lasts a lifetime,’ and I guess his inaccuracies just for cheap publicity would last a lifetime now,” he added.
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