Jammu Kashmir Apni Party hails Modi's all-party meet on June 24

Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party has welcomed the political outreach of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hoped that the all-party meet scheduled for Thursday will pave way to a political process in the union territory aimed at genuine empowerment of its people.

The party, formed in early 2020, headed by for former PDP minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government, Altaf Bukhari also demanded that concrete confidence building measures be taken by the Centre to address woes of the people of J-K.

The party held a meeting on Monday in which the leaders "hailed the political outreach of the prime minister and hoped that the June 24 meeting will facilitate commencement of a political process in Jammu and Kashmir that will eventually pave the way for genuine empowerment of its people".

Party general secretary Rafi Ahmad Mir on Tuesday said Bukhari has been authorised by the party to "represent the wishes and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir in the meeting.

Jammu Kashmir Apni Party had, unlike most mainstream parties of the state, accepted the scrapping of Article 370, and had held after the local bodies election in J&K that the people of Jammu and Kashmir had voted for development even though other parties used the issue of Article 370 as a poll plank.

Unlike most political leaders of Kashmir who were in detention following the 5 August 2019 bifurcation of the state into two union territories, Bukhari had met the prime minister in March 2020, soon after the formation of his new party.

After the meeting in which a 24-member delegation discussed the situation in the Union territory post abrogation of Article 370 and the continued detention of the mainstream political leaders with the Prime Minister, he had hailed the stand of the prime minister and quoted Modi as saying he had 'adopted Kashmir'. However, Bukhari has denied allegations of being the BJP's B-team, a perception much in currency at the time.