Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayyed made an impassioned appeal for "reconciliation" among various ideologies not sonly in J&K as embodied by his coalition government with the BJP, but also for the rest of India to take lessons in the way he and his political rival, former J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah came together >to pass a peace resolution in the J&K Assembly decrying hate mongering and extremism .
In a speech at the second India Ideas Conclave, organised by the India Foundation (IF), Mr. Sayyed repeated what he had said in his speech at the Assembly while the bipartisan peace resolution was passed. "In 1948, Mahatma Gandhi saw a ray of light emanating from J&K when the people of the state rejected the two nation theory. At this time too, the ray of light of reconciliation has come from Jammu and Kashmir, as Mr. Omar Abdullah and I worked together to pass the resolution," he said. The resolution had been brought to the Assembly following the attack on J&K MLA Engineer Rashid for hosting a beef party.
He also commended his alliance partners- the BJP for working together with him, and "sacrificing a great deal as well" and "equally honest in playing ball" to fully justify the "fractured mandate" of the Assembly polls.
"There was no comparable template from the past to draw lessons from where two such different partners had to form a government," he said. "When I looked at the mandate it was clear that reconciliation had to take place," he said. "We found a way to work together, and I am very impressed by the way Prime Minister Narendra Modi has worked for the state with such a sense of involvement," he said. He termed his coalition government with the BJP as a historical opportunity to integrate the state of Jammu and Kashmir as a whole.
He said that it was comparable to the historic Sheikh Abdullah -Indira Gandhi accord of 1975 that brought democracy back to the state, and accorded credibility to the electoral process.
