“Cheap Stunts”: Farooq Abdullah on Ex-RAW Chief’s Art. 370 Claim

New Delhi, April 16, 2025

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah reacted angrily to claims of former RAW chief A S Dulat that he had “privately backed” the Article 370 abrogation. Abdullah dismissed his claims by alleging that these are “cheap stunts” to boost the sales of his upcoming book. 

Ex-Raw Chief Dulat claims in his book “The Chief Minister and the Spy,” that NC would have “helped” pass the proposal to abrogate the special status of the erstwhile state had it been taken into confidence.

Dulat’s claim in his upcoming book

“We would have helped (pass the proposal). Why were we not taken into confidence?” Abdullah asked Dulat, according to the book.

His book ‘The Chief Minister and the Spy’ comes out on April 18, 2025.

“Figment of imagination”: Farooq Abdullah

The National Conference (NC) president said that this was a “figment of imagination” of the author.

“The claim in the book that the National Conference was planning to pass a resolution on the abrogation of the special status is merely a figment of the imagination of the author who claims to be my friend,” Abdullah said.

Abdullah pointed out that both he and his son, Omar Abdullah, had been put under arrest for several months at the time of the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019. “We were detained because our stand against the abrogation of special status was well-known,” he told PTI.

He stated that he had taken the lead in assembling a coalition of major political forces in Jammu and Kashmir. It resulted in the formation of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD). This coalition aims to preserve the special status of the state by uniting various political parties under a single umbrella.

Highlighting gaps in Dulat’s reasoning, he said, “A benchmark of common sense should have been adopted by the author while penning the so-called memoirs. He should have remembered that there was no assembly in 2018 which could have been dissolved.”

On his review of the book, Abdullah said “It is full of inaccuracies…..”

He claimed that the book is full of inaccuracies. “It is full of inaccuracies that, after a while, I thought I was reading a fiction and left it.”

He also denied Dulat’s claim that the NC wanted closer relations with the BJP.

“Dulat’s claim that the National Conference wanted to get close to the BJP is an absolute lie as I am not the one who will patch up with a party that is out and out to destroy my party.”

Moreover, he expressed disappointment with Dulat’s writing. “The worst is that he claims to be my friend, and as has been said, ‘Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart, and the wound lasts a lifetime,’ and I guess his inaccuracies just for cheap publicity would last a lifetime now,” he added.

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