Chidambaram backs Omar on AFSPA

New Delhi: Union Home Minister P Chidambaram has seen nothing wrong in Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s move to withdraw Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from certain areas of the state and said the Congress demand for more consultations on the issue was ‘perfectly understandable’. Mr Chidambaram yesterday said there is “nothing unusual or new” in Mr Abdullah’s statement on AFSPA and that review of AFSPA is part of the decisions taken by the Cabinet Committee on Security. The CCS approved an eight-point programme in September last year to ensure normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir.Point number 6 said J&K should immediately convene a meeting of unified command and review disturbed areas. “If the J&K CM wants to hasten the process, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Mr Chidambaram said. However, he said, if Congress, an ally of the coalition government in the state, desired ‘more consultations,’ that was perfectly understandable. There could be more consultations in the Cabinet too. “In a democracy, we can have consultations any number of times,” he said. “Let the Chief Minister come back to us after conducting a review. This is a CCS decision and I am part of the CCS,” he said. After the Chief Minister’s recent announcement on the government’s keenness to partially withdraw AFSPA from some areas of the state, JKPCC Chief Saif-ud-din Soz has complained that Mr Abdullah has not consulted his party. However, another state Congress Minister Taj Mohiuddin had said he had been consulted.