Media outlets including news wire agency ANI misreported an opinion piece published in The Print as a quote by Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC) Vice President and party candidate from Baramulla constituency Omar Abdullah. The media reports claimed that the former J&K chief minister said that Rashid Sheikh winning the Lok Sabha elections from the region, is a sign that "Kashmiri secessionism is far from spent."
Abdullah lost by a margin of nearly 2 lakh votes to independent candidate Sheikh Abdul Rashid, popularly known as Engineer Rashid. Founder of the Jammu and Kashmir Awami Ittehad Party, Rashid is currently jailed in an alleged terror funding case. The two time former MLA won despite having contested the elections from behind bars and facing UAPA charges.
On June 6, 2024 ANI published a story titled, '"Engineer Rashid's victory will empower secessionists in J-K": Omar Abdullah"' misattributing a statement by journalist and author Praveen Swami in an opinion piece about the Kashmir elections, published in The Print.
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ANI has since deleted their tweet and updated the story removing the attribution of the quote to Abdullah.
The same false claim was also published by other outlets like Mid Day and The Rising Kashmir.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that Omar Abdullah did not make such comments about Rashid and that the statement is from an opinion piece written by author and journalist Praveen Swami for The Print.
We found a tweet by Swami calling out ANI for their misreporting
We then looked for the opinion piece as published in The Print and found the statement misattibuted to Abdullah is the headline of the article.
The article analysis J&K's politics and how the hard-right parties from the Valley are attempting to reenter active politics. In the same context, Swami writes, "The strategy comes with risks: Rashid’s victory, without doubt, will empower secessionists, and give Kashmir’s defeated Islamist movement a renewed sense of hope. Efforts to draw secessionism back into electoral politics led New Delhi to support the rise of the People’s Democratic Party, and its alliance with the BJP. That, however, ended up empowering violent secessionists, not mainstreaming them—a warning of the unpredictable outcomes of trying to manipulate politics."
The article contains no quote from Abdullah, additionally carrying a disclaimer that all the views expressed in the article are his own.
The article was tweeted by Abdullah, highlighting the same above paragraph from the opinion piece. Abdullah's tweet also does not claim that he made such a comment about Rashid.
Abdullah tweeted an excerpt from the opinion piece using quotation marks. However, it appears news outlets mistook his tweet as his remark on Engineer Rashid.
We then ran a search for any comment made by Abdullah on his loss to Rashid and found his tweet from June 4, 2024 congratulating his opponent, "I think it’s time to accept the inevitable. Congratulations to Engineer Rashid for his victory in North Kashmir. I don’t believe his victory will hasten his release from prison nor will the people of North Kashmir get the representation they have a right to but the voters have spoken and in a democracy that’s all that matters."
The same was published by several news outlets including India Today and the FirstPost.
