Srinagar

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Saturday said his government will revoke the controversial Public Safety Act (PSA) as soon as the Union territory gets statehood.

"To remove it (the PSA), we should have a status of the state. Security and law and order should be with the elected government. The day these powers are vested with us, I will not even wait for the assembly session; we will remove this law through an ordinance," Abdullah told reporters here.

He said when he released the election manifesto last year, some journalists pointed out that the Union territory does not have the powers to carry out some of the tasks that were mentioned in the manifesto.

"At that time, I told you that we have this information. We cannot fulfil some of the promises as a Union territory. We did not say we will remove this law within a day or in the first session...We have promised to remove it," he added.

The controversial law, which was enacted in 1978 to curb timber smuggling, was used against separatists and terrorist sympathisers after 1990.

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However, the law came under sharp criticism when it was used to detain sitting MLA from Doda and AAP leader Mehraj Malik.