Srinagar, June 22: The People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) on Tuesday announced that a team headed by Farooq Abdullah and comprising PDP Chief Mehbooba Mufti and amalgam’s spokesperson Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami will attend the All Party Meeting called by Prime Minister Nadrendra Modi in New Delhi on June 24.

“We have received invitation from Prime Minister and we are going to attend,” Farooq Abdullah, who heads the amalgam, told reporters here after the meeting of the PAGD leaders at his residence.

“We are confident that we will put our stand before Prime Minister and Home Minister,” Farooq, NC Chief and the member parliament from Srinagar, said .

“When the meeting will end, we will brief you what have done there, what we said and what was the response,” he said.

The PAGD is an alliance of six parties in Jammu and Kashmir, including the NC and the PDP, formed in the aftermath of the GoIs August 2019 decision to nullify Article 370 and split J&K into two union territories. The group’s public stand is for the restoration of the special status of the ‘state’ of J&K.

To a question about those representing the PAGD at the meeting, Farooq said that he himself, Mehbooba Mufti and M Y Tarigami will be attending the meeting.

Chipping in, PDP chief Mehbooba said that earlier there was a suggestion that only Dr Farooq would represent PAGD in the June 24 meeting but now there is a consensus that all those who have been invited will go. “We are not against dialogue.

My late father Mufti Muhammad Sayeed has always advocated dialogue for resolution of issues. I believe New Delhi should have released all political prisoners for creating an atmosphere for talks but it didn’t,” she said. “Now we will demand the release of political prisoners as there are many who are ill in jails. We will also seek immediate shifting of prisoners back to J&K jails from various Indian prisons.” Echoing similar views, Tarigami said that prisoners like Shabir Ahmed Shah are very ill in prisons and that the release of inmates is highly inevitable now.

Tarigami, the spokesman of the PAGD, said that there should be no “mistaken belief that we are going to sign on the agenda set by them. We are going to see what the proposal is. If it is in the interest of people we say yes and if otherwise there is going be big no.”

PAGD member Muzaffar Shah also announced that there shall be no compromise on Article 370 and Article 35A which was annulled by the ruling dispensation at New Delhi on 5 August 2019 while imposing security and communication clampdown in entire J&K and detaining or arresting thousands of people including the mainstream leaders. gns