After police ‘deny’ escorting vehicles, Omar Abdullah walks to party office in Srinagar

Omar Abdullah, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, set out on foot from his home to the party office here on Thursday after the police allegedly refused to provide him with escort vehicles or ITBP troops support.

 

A memorial service for the 22 Kashmiris who were slaughtered by a Dogra ruler’s soldiers on this day in 1931 was to be addressed by Abdullah, vice president of the National Conference (NC), at the party’s headquarters, Nawa-i-Subah.

 

He said that the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the Jammu and Kashmir Police had refused him access to his security escort vehicles and authorization to travel to the party headquarters.

 

The police did not respond immediately.

 

Abdullah didn’t let the reported denial stop him from walking around a km from his home in the Gupkar area to the office at Zero Bridge. A few members of his special security squad, a division of the J-K Police in charge of protecting VIPs, accompanied him as he went.

 

The former chief minister of J-K released a video of his stroll on Twitter. ‘Dear @JmuKmrPolice don’t think that refusing to give me my escort vehicles & ITBP cover will stop me. I’ll walk to where I have to get to & that’s exactly what I’m doing now,’ Abdullah wrote on Twitter.

 

The NC vice president announced that the ‘police would now send everything’ for his security as soon as he arrived at the office, where party leaders and activists were waiting for him.

 

‘Now that I’ve got to the office & will go ahead with my programme you will send everything. The fact is @JmuKmrPolice has stopped a lot of my senior colleagues from coming to the @JKNC_ office today by adopting the same tactics of stopping them in their homes. Notable amongst those stopped are Abdul Rahim Rather Sb, @AliMSagar_ Sb, Ali Mohd Dar Sb and others,’ he said.

 

In the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, July 13 was a holiday, and every year, the chief minister or the governor would be the special guest at a large formal function.

 

After Article 370 was repealed and the former state was divided into two Union territories by the Centre on August 5, 2019, the governor government removed the day from the schedule of holidays in 2020.