Abdullah also cited the stand of the Centre before the Supreme Court reaffirming its commitment to restore statehood at the earliest.

However, he said, the “interpretation of terms like ‘at the earliest’ or ‘as soon as possible’ cannot stretch into years or decades”.

“The people of Jammu and Kashmir have already waited long enough — statehood must be restored now.”

He called the “prolonged and unprecedented disempowerment” of the people of Jammu and Kashmir “unjust” and said it “undermines the very rationale that was invoked to justify the changes of August 2019”.

“The restoration (of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir) must not be viewed as a concession, but as an essential course correction — one that prevents us from sliding down a dangerous and slippery slope where the statehood of our constituent states is no longer regarded as a foundational and sacred constitutional right but reduced instead to a discretionary favour bestowed at the will of the central government,” the letter said.

“More than nine months have passed and yet there is no clarity, timeline, or visible progress toward fulfilling that solemn assurance,” Abdullah lamented.

The chief minister’s letter warned that the “temporary” status is beginning to “appear more as a convenient alibi than a genuine commitment”, serving as a “proverbial fig leaf” for an “indefensible act”.

He said that the six-year persistence of this status is “far beyond what any reasonable interpretation of the word might allow” and that an arrangement “meant to be transitional cannot be allowed to harden into permanence”.