Omar Abdullah
Former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Omar Abdullah said that had the situation in the state reached such an extent that the government was afraid of allowing foreign journalists to report freely from the state.
On Tuesday Annie Gowen, the India bureau chief of Washington Post, tweeted that she was in the valley for attending a wedding of a friend.
But she said she was not reporting because the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Home Affairs had not granted the special permit now required for foreign correspondents.
Gowen said, she applied for the permit on June 22.
“Has the situation in Kashmir deteriorated to such an extent that we are now afraid to let foreign correspondents report freely from Kashmir? Another crowning achievement of BJP’s Kashmir policy ably assisted by its partners in crime the PDP,” Abdullah tweeted on Tuesday.
Foreign journalists, in the early 1990s too, had to seek permission from the Home Ministry to report from J&K.
