By IANS,
New Delhi : An impassioned Omar Abdullah of the National Conference declared Tuesday that he would not make the “mistake” of standing again with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, implying he would support the trust motion Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has moved in parliament.
“I made the mistake of standing with them once (in the previous dispensation in which he was a minister of state). I will not make the same mistake again,” Abdullah declared forcefully while participating in the closing moments of the debate on the trust motion in the Lok Sabha Tuesday evening before it was put to vote.
Heaping praise on the India-US civilian nuclear deal, Abdullah scoffed at the BJP’s plea to him to vote with the opposition in defeating the government.
“These people (BJP-NDA) now want me to vote with them to bring down this government,” Abdullah declared, pumping the air with his right hand – the scorn clearly evidence in his voice.
“I am an Indian. I am a Muslim. I’m for the deal,” he maintained.
Pointing to the decades for which the annual Hindu pilgrimage to the Amarnath shrine in Kashmir had been conducted along a route that is largely populated by Muslims, Abdullah said: “As long as there are Muslims in Kashmir, the yatra (pilgrimage) will continue.”
Before Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti of Kashmir’s People’s Democratic Party and Asaduddin Owaisi of the AIMIM also supported the government on the confidence motion.