Srinagar, May 15 : Jammu and Kashmir Assembly Speaker Abdul Rahim Rather on Friday asserted that the National Conference (NC) has always opposed the consumption of alcohol and will continue to do so, recalling that he personally stood against the practice during his tenure as finance minister.
“National Conference was, is, and will remain against alcohol. When I was finance minister, that time also I stood against alcohol,”
The Speaker termed alcohol a “curse” and urged religious scholars to guide people away from what he described as a violation of Qur’anic commandments.
“I would like to request our religious scholars and missionaries to inform people that it is a curse to use something that has been entrusted in the Qur’an. We should all respect the Qur’anic commandment and follow it,” he said.
Speaker Rather recalled an attempt to ban the practice during his finance ministry tenure but said the decision could not be taken due to a lack of majority in the assembly.
“The Memorandum of Understanding demanded that it should be banned. I said at that time that the Assembly’s Memorandum is in its right. There should be a majority to take any decision,” he added.
