Former PDP leader and ex-finance minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Altaf Bukhari on Saturday challenged the Congress Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad to prove his allegations against him or quit his present position in the Parliament on moral grounds.
Reacting to media reports, wherein Azad has been quoted as saying that some Congress leaders were being threatened with being implicated in false cases to get them to join the emerging “Third Front”, Bukhari said it is unfortunate that a leader like Azad is playing "cheap politics."
“Let me put it on record that I hold Azad Sahab in high esteem but it is unfortunate that he has leveled baseless allegations against me and my colleagues, stooping so low for doing petty politics,” the former finance minister observed.
Bukhari said that he neither holds any power nor is in any position "to misuse official machinery or agencies, like has been the precedence in Congress, led regimes in J&K."
However, he said, it is a fact that a number of senior Congress leaders were in touch with him "but there is no question of coercing them or extending any facilities like Azad has pointed out in his statement."
Bukhari said that the remarks made by the leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha have "exposed his respect for his party colleagues in Jammu and Kashmir whom he has brandished as imprudent to take any decision on their own."
He challenged Azad, a former chief minister of J&K, to prove his allegations and corroborate his remarks or else quit from the position he holds in Parliament.
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