SRINAGAR: PDP president Mehbooba Mufti declared on Sunday that the Supreme Court’s ruling on Article 370 is “not God’s verdict” and that her party will continue to fight for Jammu and Kashmir to be granted special status again. Her comments came a few days after the Supreme Court, on December 11, upheld the Center’s decision to repeal Article 370, which gave the former state of Jammu and Kashmir special status. The court also ordered that statehood be restored “as soon as possible” and that elections for the assembly be held by September 30 of the following year. “We don’t need to give up. We’re going to keep fighting. The Chief Justice is not God. The same Supreme Court had previously declared that the constituent assembly’s recommendation is required in order to amend Article 370. They were also intelligent judges. Today, the decision was made by a few more judges. We cannot accept it as divine decree,” Mehbooba Mufti said in Kupwara to reporters. People who oppose J-K’s special status, according to her, want “us to give up”. “Our opponents want us to give up, but we’re not going to stop fighting until the very end.” We cannot allow the many sacrifices we have made to be in vain,” she remarked.
