While Lashing out PDP and its Parliamentarians from the Valley for maintaining a 'criminal silence' over the 'brazen discrimination meted out to Kashmir' by the Union Government while allotting an IIT to Jammu and depriving the youth of the Valley on this count, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah Saturday said "it was a matter of absolute shame for the leadership of PDP that its Parliamentarians had bartered the interests of the youth of the state for petty, short-term political benefits".“Unlike the criminal attitude and negligence shown towards Kashmir by PDP and its Parliamentarians who thrive on rhetoric and hypocrisy, it were the Parliamentarians from National Conference who raised their voices both inside and outside the Parliament and got two Central Universities for the State, one each for Kashmir and Jammu,” the Chief Minister said, while addressing workers in Varmul.
The Chief Minister said that the manner of conspicuous silencemaintained by PDP and its MPs over this lopsided and discriminatory decision of the BJP Government proved PDP’s covert understanding with BJP to pide the State on regional lines by engineering a rift between Kashmir and Jammu. “One can safely assume that these tricks and tactics are being employed keeping an eye on the forthcoming Assembly Elections in the State. They want to perpetuate regional polarization in the State for mutual electoral interests as was done in Parliament Elections”, the NC Working President said.
“This is only the beginning and PDP MPs have already started revealing their hidden agenda and lack of spine through their complicity in such blatant discrimination. One can only dread what could be in store for the people of Kashmir who were misled by PDP through rhetoric, hypocrisy and hollow promises of raising their voice in the Parliament. Where is PDP's voice now?", the Working President, National Conference asked. Omar Abdullah said that National Conference treated all three regions of the State equally without any prejudices and out-rightly rejects this policy of applying different yardsticks to Kashmir Valley and Jammu. He said the interests of all three regions - Jammu,Kashmir and Ladakh were equally dear to National Conference and the party would continue to fight for equitable development and justice in all the regions and sub-regions of the state.