Article 370 revoked: Akhilesh seeks govt's response on status of PoK

A day after the Centre revoked Article 370 of the Constitution, that granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday said the government should clarify if Pakistan occupied Kashmir is a part of India or not.

"The government should answer the question that Pakistan occupied Kashmir is part of which land. Assure us that PoK is a part of India and the 24 seats that are empty in the assembly will be filled, "Yadav said in Lok Sabha during a debate on the resolutions for Jammu and Kashmir.

"We are with the country but I want to know when we will get this happiness from Nagaland, Sikkim and Mizoram," he added.

Yadav said the consent of the people of Jammu and Kashmir was not taken into consideration before taking the decision of scrapping Article 370.

"The Jammu and Kashmir governor said that he did not know what will happen, but after 48 hours, the whole country knew what had happened," he said.

Elaborating on his statement with an age-old tale, Yadav said, "A king once ate brinjal and said that this is the best vegetable. The people believed it blindly and spread the news everywhere that brinjal is the best vegetable. The king then asked his minister Birbal and the minister also replied that brinjal is the best vegetable but the next day the king fell sick. The king asked his minister why he said this is the best vegetable, to which the minister replied that I am doing my job, you said this is the best I said the same."

"Just like King's minister, the governor (Jammu and Kashmir) said what the central government wanted him to say," he added.

Backing Congress on BJP's allegations of development hindered in the last 70 years in Jammu and Kashmir, Yadav asked why the ruling party did not fuel development in its 11-year tenure in power.

A resolution removing the special status of the state under Article 370 was approved by the Rajya Sabha on Monday with Shah saying the constitutional provision was the "root cause of terrorism" in the state, and that the Modi government was committed to making the state the most progressive in the country.

The Jammu and Kashmir (Reorganisation) Bill, 2019, which strips Jammu and Kashmir's status of a state and converts it into a Union Territory with legislature and carving out Ladakh region as a union territory without legislature, was passed in a division pressed by the opposition with 125 votes in favour and 61 against, and an NCP member abstained.