'Should we have garlanded him': Rajnath Singh slams Omar Abdullah for comments on 2001 Parliament attacker Afzal Guru's execution

"It is unfortunate that Omar Abdullah made such remarks. If Afzal Guru shouldn't have been hanged, then what should we have done? Should we have publicly garlanded him?” Singh said, addressing a rally in Ramban in poll-bound Jammu and Kashmir, reported India Today.

"The Jammu and Kashmir government had nothing to do with Afzal Guru's execution. Otherwise, you would have to do with the state government's permission, which I can tell you in no uncertain terms would have been forthcoming. I don't believe any purpose was served by executing him," Abdullah told news agency ANI in its podcast.

Afzal Guru was hanged at Delhi's Tihar Jail on February 9, 2013, for orchestrating the December 13, 2001, attack on Parliament, and he was buried in the jail grounds.

Meanwhile, at the rally, Rajnath Singh criticized Pakistan for treating the residents of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) as outsiders.

He emphasized that India views the people of POK as its own citizens and predicted that the time is near when they would express their wish to become part of India.

"Recently, the Additional Solicitor General in Pakistan said that POK is a foreign land. I want to tell the people of POK that Pakistan considers you foreigners, while we consider you as our own," Rajnath Singh said.

"Vote for us. We will develop Jammu and Kashmir. People of POK will join us after seeing the development here," he further added.

The assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir are scheduled to take place in three phases: September 18, September 25, and October 1, with the results set to be announced on October 8.

This will be the first assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir in ten years and the first since the revocation of Article 370 in 2019.