Srinagar, Sept. 14: The Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Mr Omar Abdullah, has again refused to resign even as the use of phrases “trust deficit” and “governance deficit’ in the official statement issued after Monday’s CCS meeting in New Delhi and the Centre’s reportedly “dithering’ over the withdrawal of Armed Forces (Special) Powers Act had supposedly upset him.
“No, I’m not going to quit. I don’t want to push my people into bigger crisis by running away from my responsibility and betraying the trust they have reposed in me,” he said here in an interview on Tuesday.
At the CCS meeting, chaired by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, it was decided that the government would focus on reducing “trust-deficit and governance-deficit”.
A national newspaper had reported that a disappointed Chief Minister had offered to resign over the remark and the Centre’s dilly-dallying over his demand that the Armed Forces (Special) Powers Act, widely seen here and in the Northeast as a weapon being used for impunity by the security forces, should be phased out from Jammu and Kashmir as a first step towards confidence building.
The Chief Minister soon after returning from Delhi had a busy day holding a series of meetings with his ministers from both coalition partners-National Conference and the Congress-senior leaders of the NC and legislators to discuss the current situation in the Valley, said an official spokesperson.
The spokesperson reacting to the newspaper report that Mr Abdullah had offered to resign following the CCS’s purported snub said, “There is not an iota of truth in it.” He urged the media “not to give credence to needless and baseless rumours.”
The NC president and Union minister, Mr Farooq Abdullah, was scheduled to hold a meeting with the members of the party’s core group to finalise its strategy for the proposed all-party meet called by the PM on Kashmir in New Delhi.