Thaindian News

Jammu, Nov 4 (IANS) Congress Friday rejected National Conference president Farooq Abdullah’s regrets over his party leader Mustafa Kamal’s anti-Congress diatribe.

Reacting to Farooq Abdullah’s statement issued late Thursday evening in which he had regretted his brother and NC leader Mustafa Kamal’s statements against the Congress, army and centre, a spokesman of the Congress said that “this was not acceptable”.

Farooq was virtually apologetic about party Additional General Secretary and chief spokesman Mustafa Kamal’s utterances in which he had blamed Congress for “betraying” National Conference time and again as also charged the army with sponsoring grenade attacks in the Valley as it did not want revocation of Armed Forces Special Powers Act from some parts of the state.

Pradesh Congress Committee General Secretary and spokesperson Ravinder Sharma-MLC said that “Farooq Abdullah’s advice to Mustafa Kamal not to speak against Congress party and thus condoning his sins for his highly malicious, misleading and derogatory statements against the Congress is not acceptable to the rank and file of the Congress party.”

In a statement, Sharma said that “since the inception of NC-Congress coalition government in the state, Mustafa Kamal had been issuing such statements in the same tone and tenor and had been repeating this time and again.”

“The advice of Farooq Abdullah, on one or two occasions has not served any purpose in the past also. Rather, the general perception in the public is that he (Dr. Kamal) has been rewarded for his these activities and assigned the duty of official spokesman of National Conference and now Kamal simply understands that the job of spokesman is always to keep his mouth open, that too against the coalition partner,” said Sharma.

“In view of this, Farooq Abdullah’s regrets won’t serve any purpose for the cadres of Congress party who know that Kamal had always his foot in the mouth and would continue to do so,” the Congress leader said.