Srinagar: PDP president Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday said August 5 marks “a black day” for the entire nation, and the abrogation of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status was the “beginning of a broader assault” on constitutional values of the country.

The PDP also claimed that its president, along with party workers, was barred from stepping out of the party office to take out a protest against the “unilateral and unconstitutional” abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019. “August 5 marks a black day not just for Jammu & Kashmir, but for the entire nation. On this day, the Constitution was subverted not by foreign hands, but from within, by a brute majority in the heart of our democracy,” Mehbooba said in a post on X. She said the “unconstitutional” abrogation of J-K’s special status was not an end, “it was the beginning of a broader assault on constitutional values”.

“J-K was turned into a laboratory its people disempowered, its land dispossessed, its demography targeted. What many saw as a local issue was a warning for all,” she charged.

“Today, that warning is unfolding across the country. In Bihar (SIR) threatens to disenfranchise lakhs. From Tamil Nadu to Kashmir non-local voters are being added en masse, paving the way for demographic manipulation and electoral distortion,” she said. “If India does not wake up now, what began in J-K will soon define the nation,” she added. Flaying the curbs placed on its leaders, the PDP said, “Suppressing democratic dissent has become the new normal in Kashmir”.

They said PDP leaders and workers assembled at the party office and tried to take out a protest march against the abrogation of Article 370 on its sixth anniversary, but were not allowed by the police to move out.