Arguments by Solicitor General in SC vindicate our stand that J&K situation far from normal: Mehbooba

Srinagar, Aug 29 (PTI) PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday said the arguments by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta in Supreme Court during the hearings on a batch of petitions challenging the abrogation of Article 370 vindicated her party’s stand that the situation in Jammu and Kashmir was far from normal.

The Solicitor General on Tuesday informed a five-judge constitution bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, that the Union Territory status of Jammu and Kashmir is not a “permanent thing” and the Centre will make an elaborate statement on the vexatious political issue in the court on August 31.

The bench was hearing Mehta’s submissions defending the Centre’s decision to do away with the special status of the former state and its reorganisation.

“Despite GOI’s tall claims, SG’s statement before the SC today vindicates our stand that the situation is far from normal in J&K,” Mufti posted on X, formerly Twitter.

She said the Solicitor General is making the argument only as an excuse to defend the Centre’s “constitutional harakiri”.

“Even to achieve this abnormal normalcy, J&K has been turned into an open air prison. Tushar Mehta is now invoking our argument only as an excuse to defend GOI’s constitutional hara-kiri,” she said on the microblogging site.

NC leader and former Jammu and Kashmir chief minster Omar Abdullah also called Mehta’s argument a “diversion”.

“The SG is a very competent & clever litigator. He’s trying to divert the focus of the arguments to the centre’s view of ‘normalcy’. This is a trap best avoided,” Abdullah said.

He underlined that the apex court has not been petitioned to rule on the security situation or normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir, adding that the “simple question for the Hon CJ & other judges on the bench is to decide whether the changes forced on J&K in 2019 were legal & constitutional or not”.

“Everything else is a diversion,” he added.