Jammu, Mar 5: All 28 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators staged a walkout from the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly on Wednesday after Speaker Abdul Rahim Rather ordered the expunging of "derogatory remarks" made by the Leader of the Opposition regarding the July 13, 1931 martyrs.
The controversy erupted when Leader of the Opposition Sunil Sharma made comments against the 1931 martyrs while responding to a speech by PDP legislator Waheed-ur-Rehman Para. Para had called for the reinstatement of public holidays on July 13 and December 5 in honor of National Conference (NC) founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. Supporting the demand, CPI(M) leader M.Y. Tarigami and Congress leader Nizamuddin Bhat also urged the Speaker to remove Sharma’s remarks from the records and sought an apology from him.
Following the uproar, Speaker Rather announced the expunging of the contentious remarks, prompting BJP legislators to walk out in protest.
July 13 was historically observed as a public holiday in Jammu and Kashmir to honor 22 men who were killed by Dogra Maharaja’s forces outside Srinagar Central Jail in 1931. However, after the revocation of Article 370 and the reorganization of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories in 2019, the Lieutenant Governor’s administration scrapped both this holiday and the one on December 5, which marked Sheikh Abdullah’s birth anniversary.[KNT]
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