‘Atom bomb will fall on us’: Farooq Abdullah’s warning after Rajnath Singh’s PoK remark
National Conference president Farooq Abdullah said Pakistan is a nuclear armed state and will not sit quietly in wake of any such attempt by India. (PTI Photo)
Veteran National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah on Monday said that Pakistan would not watch any attempt by India to merge Pakistan Occupied Kashmir with it and warned about the nuclear capabilities of the terror-infested neighbour.
Abdullah was responding to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s recent remarks that India would not need to to “capture” PoK as the call to merge with India would automatically rise among its population after looking at the development of Kashmir.
“I think India will not have to do anything. The way the ground situation has changed in Jammu and Kashmir, the way the region is witnessing economic progress and the way peace has returned there, I think demands will emerge from people of PoK that they should merge with India,” Singh said in an interview to PTI.
“If the defence minister is saying it, then go ahead. Who are we to stop? But remember, they (Pakistan) are also not wearing bangles. It has atom bombs, and unfortunately, that atom bomb will fall on us,” Abdullah said responding to media querries on the Defence Minister’s statement.
he remark triggered an immediate backlash from the Bharatiya Janata Party which accused Abdullah of speaking in Pakistan’s language. BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Sudhanshu Trivedi said leaders pof the INDIA bloc had an imprint of Pakistan on them.
“Till now, some extremist leaders of Pakistan said they have an atom bomb. But now, a senior and forefront leader of the INDIA bloc, Farooq Abdullah, has said the same. Former Pakistan minister Fawad Chaudhary said that BJP and (PM Narendra) Modi should go. Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar gave moral cover fire to Pakistan on 26/11,” he said, referring to the Maharashtra Congress leader’s remarks on the killing of Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare.
The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), an ally of BJP-led NDA, condemned Farooq Abdullah’s comments and called them shameful.
“I am ashamed that such statements are given by people living in the country. When he (Farooq Abdullah) and his son (Omar Abdullah) gave interviews when Article 370 was still implemented, they sounded like Pakistanis. They should be ashamed. Such people have no right to live in the country,” RLD national general secretary Malook Nagar told news agency ANI.
India has always claimed that PoK is a part of India. Earlier, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that POK “has never been out” of India and that people were “made to forget about it”.
Responding to a question on India’s plans for PoK during an event in Odisha’s Cuttack, he said on Sunday, “POK has never been out of this country. It is part of this country. There is a resolution of the Indian Parliament that POK is very much a part of India.”