Kashmir Impulse Desk
Srinagar, Aug 5
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Wednesday played down a controversy over former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti holding the Indian national flag upside down during a protest, saying he did not believe it was intentional.
Mufti, president of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), was seen with the inverted tricolour during a sit-in outside her party office in Srinagar on Tuesday night against the 2019 revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to flood-hit Surankote in Poonch district, Abdullah said it was difficult to believe that someone who had served as chief minister would deliberately display the national flag incorrectly.
He said that if it was an inadvertent error, it should simply be acknowledged.
During the protest, Mufti held both the national flag and the flag of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Images from the demonstration showed the tricolour with its saffron band at the bottom.
India’s Flag Code requires the saffron band to be displayed at the top, with white and the Ashoka Chakra in the middle, and green at the bottom.
