Journalism of Courage
The National Conference (NC) Thursday decided to boycott the remaining session of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly in protest against the House adopting a resolution to implement the GST in the state. The opposition party claimed it is a plot to trample the aspirations of the people by demolishing the state’s special status.
Amid protests by the NC and the Congress, the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly yesterday adopted a resolution for implementing the GST in the state. The boycott decision was taken at a meeting of the NC’s core-group chaired by the party chief Farooq Abdullah, a spokesman said here.
He said the “anti-people resolution” is an unequivocal compromise with the special status of the state.
The NC core-group observed that the statement of Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu on the floor of the House terming the Article 370 of the Constitution as an obstruction to the development and progress of the state reflects the intentions of the ruling dispensation against the special political and constitutional identity of Jammu and Kashmir, the spokesman said.
The party called adoption of the resolution on GST a “misadventure” and warned the PDP-BJP government that it is going to have wider ramifications and dangerous consequences.
Talking about state BJP chief Sat Sharma’s statement in the House that the GST implementation was the biggest slap on the face of the separatists, the NC said it is a glaring contradiction of earlier misleading assertions made by the PDP-BJP alliance claiming that the extension of GST to the state was purely a taxation matter and had nothing to do with the politics and the identity of the state.
