On his party's dismal performance in the recently concluded Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections, Awami Ittehad Party's Engineer Abdul Rashid on Friday said as he was in the jail, he could not get much time for the elections and hence his party could not perform well in the polls.
In comparison to the Lok Sabha elections, his party failed to make a mark in the assembly polls. When asked whether he lost the support of voters, he said there was nothing like that, and a fake narrative was set against him during the polls.
To another question on whether it will be easy to restore statehood of Jammu and Kahsmir along with Article 370, Engineer Rashid said Omar Abdullah should not have taken oath untill the statehood or Aticle 370 is restored. "But he doesn't seem to be worried about it. I think he is more greedy for power and bunglow, hence he is not saying anything now about these core issues," he said.
Speaking exclusively to India TV, Engineer Rashid said the NC-Congress alliance has to answer to public on restoration of Article 370 in jammu and kashmir.
Talking about the focus of Congress on Jammu and Kashmir during assembly elections, Engineer Rashid said the standpoint of neither Rahul Gandhi nor Congress is clear on Jammu and Kashmir. He went on to say that Rahul Gandhi never made it clear whether he supports Article 370 or opposes it.
Omar Abdullah and Rahul Gandhi of the NC-Congress allinace will have to answer to the public on their standpoint on restoration of Article 370 and statehood of Jammu and Kashmir.
In the recently concluded Assembly elections in Jammua nd Kashmir, Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI)-backed independent candidates and Engineer Abdul Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) failed to make much impact even as their last-minute alliance was expected to skew the electoral arithmetic in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K).
The AIP won just one of the 35 seats (Langate) it contested while Jamaat-backed nominees were trailing in all 10 constituencies they were fielded from.
Engineer Rashid, who was arrested in 2019 in relation to a terror funding case and granted bail for the assembly polls, attracted good crowds to his rallies. On th eother hand, Rashid's brother Khusheed Ahmad Sheikh won in Langate by a margin of 1,602 votes, gaining 25,984 votes.
