Kashmir will not remain part of a communal India: Farooq Abdullah

Srinagar, April 27 (IANS) National Conference (NC) patron and Srinagar Lok Sabha candidate Farooq Abdullah said Sunday that Jammu and Kashmir would not remain a part of India if the country becomes communal, while asking those who vote for Narendra Modi to "drown themselves".

Lashing out at Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate, Abdullah told a party election rally in old city's Khanyar area that: "Those who say that people opposing Modi should go to Pakistan must remember that if India becomes a communal country, Kashmir would not remain its part.

"Those who vote for Modi should drown themselves in a river".

Criticizing his opponents of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Abdullah alleged that PDP's open support to BJP was a historic betrayal of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and its patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed should know that there is a limit to a nation's tolerance to gimmickry, political intrigues and lies.

"Every single vote that you will cast for National Conference will be a vote against the Modi-Mufti alliance and will be a vote that will stop the march of communal forces from entering Jammu and Kashmir.

"National Conference has defended Article 370 (of the constitution) and Kashmiriyat from hundreds of intrigues and thousands of enemies and National Conference will continue to be a protection shield for Jammu and Kashmir and its people long after I am gone," he said.

"Mufti Sayeed nurtures a grudge against Kashmiris that they have handed him embarrassing electoral defeats from his native constituency four times, a loud and clear rejection that forced his rehabilitation in Muzaffarnagar (in Uttar Pradesh) as a member of parliament from a safe seat at a time when he couldn't garner more than 300 votes in his own state," Abdullah said.