Touching down at Srinagar on Thursday after being granted bail for campaigning in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections, Member of Parliament and Awami Ittehad Party (ITP) chief Sheikh Abdul Rashid, popularly known as Engineer Rashid, said peace would be restored in J&K “on our terms, not on the terms set by the Central government.”
After his arrival at Srinagar Airport from New Delhi, where he was incarcerated in Tihar Jail, Rashid knelt down and touched his forehead to the ground as a gesture of gratefulness to the Almighty
Later, addressing a massive gathering of AIP workers and supporters at Baramulla, he said, “We want to convey to (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi that no one needs peace more than we do. But that peace will come on our terms, not yours. We do not want the peace of a graveyard but peace with dignity.”
The people of Kashmir were not weak… They people of Jammu and Kashmir are on the path of truth, he added.
On the Abrogation of Article 370, Rashid said the decision taken by the Centre on August 5, 2019, was not acceptable under any circumstances. “Whether you send me to Tihar or anywhere else, we will emerge victorious,” he said.
Supported by his family members and party leaders, he asked his supporters not to lose courage as “the truth is with us.”
He said, “Nobody on the face of this earth, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Amit Shah, can suppress our voices. We will be victorious; we want to be treated like humans with dignity and respect.”
“The Jammu and Kashmir issue needs resolution as the issue has been pending since 1947 and has since resulted in the deaths of over five lakh people. Without solving the Kashmir issue, there will be no peace in the subcontinent,” he said.
When asked about the allegations of being a BJP proxy, he said he has high regard for both Kashmiri leaders Omar Abdullah of the National Conference and Mehbooba Mufti of the Peoples Democratic Party, although he claimed his fight was with “much bigger powers than with the two.”
“These leaders have been nowhere for the past five years. That is the sole reason for their defeat in the Lok Sabha elections,”’ he said, adding, however, that he was saddened by Omar Abdullah’s loss in the elections.
Rashid said he derived satisfaction from the fact that the people of North and Central Kashmir burst the imaginary bubble of PM Modi’s ‘naya Kashmir’.
Ending his address, he said, “I salute the people of north Kashmir, the people of whole Kashmir.”