J&K Assembly Erupts in Fistfights After Omar Abdullah's Statehood Resolution Cites 2000 Autonomy Document

The Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly turned into a brawl on Friday, September 25, after Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tabled a resolution demanding the Centre immediately restore full statehood to the Union Territory.

The resolution itself sounds uncontroversial. It calls on New Delhi to make good on a promise. But Abdullah didn't stop there. He explicitly tied it to two older documents: the June 26, 2000 autonomy resolution passed when Farooq Abdullah ran the state government, and a November 6, 2024 resolution seeking restoration of special status.

According to the Press Trust of India as carried by Greater Kashmir, BJP MLAs stormed the well of the house the moment the autonomy resolution got mentioned. They tore up copies of the document. MLA R.S. Pathania declared, "We will not allow discussion on the issue of autonomy in the house." Rediff reported the confrontation escalated into actual fist fights between legislators. Deccan Chronicle described competing chants filling the chamber, NC and allied members yelling "Special status bahal karo" while BJP members countered with slogans invoking Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the Jana Sangh founder who died in Kashmir custody in 1953. Speaker Abdul Rahim Rather adjourned the House for thirty minutes, then gave up and pushed it to Monday, September 28.

The original autonomy resolution asked for restoration of J&K's pre-1953 constitutional position, essentially rolling back decades of integration with the rest of India. Then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government rejected it outright in 2000. BJP's Leader of Opposition Sunil Sharma invoked that history directly, telling reporters, "Vajpayee ji rejected this very demand in 2000. The BJP will not tolerate its revival today." Sharma accused the NC government of "manufacturing this controversy purely to distract from two years of failed governance."

That's a serious charge, and it deserves a fair hearing. Sharma isn't wrong that Article 370's abrogation in August 2019 was upheld by India's Supreme Court, and BJP has consistently argued the autonomy question is legally and politically closed. From that view, dragging a 26-year-old rejected demand into a statehood debate looks like an attempt to smuggle in a settled fight under cover of a popular one.

But Abdullah's side has a coherent answer too. National Conference spokesman Imran Nabi Dar pointed out that eight BJP MLAs themselves supported the 2000 autonomy resolution at the time, asking pointedly, "How is it anti-national now?" Abdullah himself framed the resolution around a specific broken promise, telling the Assembly that Delhi had committed to a three-step process: delimitation, elections, then statehood. Delimitation happened. Elections happened in 2024, with what he called enthusiastic public participation. Statehood never came. "That promise remained unfulfilled," Abdullah said. "Today, through this House, we want to remind the government of India of its promise."

Jammu and Kashmir has been a Union Territory since 2019, not a state, and Delhi has not set a date to change that despite holding elections there in 2024.

While BJP was trying to strip the autonomy reference out, the Peoples Democratic Party was demanding the opposite. PDP legislator Muntazir Mehdi called Friday's resolution "weak" and moved an amendment demanding the House "express its deep anguish over the unilateral measures" of August 2019 and press for statehood restoration "along with its constitutional safeguards," according to The Hindu. That amendment has not been voted on.

On Saturday, Sunil Sharma traveled to New Delhi and met Home Minister Amit Shah at his residence, according to ETV Bharat and confirmed separately by The Times of India and The Hindu. A BJP spokesman said Sharma briefed Shah on "security, law and order, development initiatives" and the ongoing Assembly session, and separately pressed for a pay raise for Special Police Officers in the region. Shah, per the BJP's own readout, "reiterated the Union government's commitment to peace, development, and prosperity in Jammu and Kashmir." No timeline for statehood restoration was announced at that meeting, and none of the seven reports reviewed here indicate the Centre has committed to one.

The resolution, autonomy reference intact, is scheduled to come up for debate in the Assembly on Monday, September 28. Whether PDP's amendment gets a vote, whether BJP tries to block the debate outright, and whether the Centre responds to the underlying statehood demand at all remain open questions.