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Updated: Sep 25, 2019 22:16 IST

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has invited Kashmiri students of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) for an interaction ‘on the nullifying of Article 370 and its advantages’ in Lucknow on September 28.

Abdul Hamid, registrar, AMU, said, the chief minister sent out an invitation to AMU and the university administration communicated the same to the Kashmiri students on September 24.

“We received communication that the chief minister wants to talk to Kashmiri students. We communicated the same to the students,” he said.

The Chief Minister’s Office invited around 40 students to the state capital, where the chief minister would discuss nullifying of Article 370 and its advantages, said a government official. However, the district administration officials refused to comment on any development.

The invitation has apparently not gone down well with Kashmiri students of AMU.

In a communiqué issued here, AMU’s Kashmiri students said the UP CM should talk to professors, lawyers, students and common people of Kashmir who have been airlifted from Kashmir and jailed in UP prisons and hear the plight of people living in Jammu and Kashmir.

The AMU registrar said, “So far, none of them has given their names for the meet.”

The Aligarh district administration also spoke to the students about the interaction and its agenda, he added. He said the efforts were on to persuade the students.

“We find this invitation political in nature,” said the Kashmiri students in the written statement.

A group of Kashmiri students also informed the university officials that the meeting was part of photo-op politics.

A Kashmiri student Waseem Makai said, “We do not want to become pawns... to create a façade of healthy relations with the people of Kashmir.”

AMU students’ union president Mohammad Salman Imtiaz asked when the government did not bother to consult Kashmiris while nullifying Article 370, why was it bothered to talk to them now?

There are around 1200 Kashmiri students studying in different streams in AMU. Earlier, some Kashmiri students of AMU staged a protest against nullifying Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir.