Early Times Report
Jammu, Apr 18 : The BJP with the blessings of people of Jammu province has won both the Lok Sabha seats in the province and now it is preparing itself to replicate Jammu in Ladakh and win the lone Ladakh Lok Sabha seats.
The BJP will win the Jammu seat with a huge margin of over 3 lakh and Udhampur seat with a margin of over one lakh votes. This was stated here today by Prof Hari Om, Political Advisor to BJP State President Jugal Kishore Sharma, while interacting with media persons. He was reflecting on the high voter turnout in the province and on the senseless opposition of the Congress, the NC, the PDP and the CPI-M to the loud demand in Ladakh for Union Territory (UT). He thanked the people for their enthusiastic participation in the election and termed as a great victory of democracy and mainstream politics in the Jammu province.
Terming Congress, NC, PDP and CPI-M as anti-Ladakh and anti-Jammu and Kashmir-centric, Prof Hari Om, Political Advisor to BJP State President Jugal Kishore Sharma, on Friday said that their bitter opposition to the age-old demand in Ladakh for Union Territory (UT) status is communally motivated. "Kashmiri leaders of all hues, including the Congress, the NC, the PDP and the CPI-M, have ganged up to scuttle the genuine demand of the oppressed, suppressed, economically ignored and politically marginalized Ladakhis seeking segregation from Kashmir," he said, adding that there is nothing whatever that is common between Ladakh and Kashmir and that the Ladakhis needed to be given UT status so that they become master of their own destiny and shape their political and economic future themselves within India and under the Indian Constitution.
"The Kashmir-based Congress leadership, which is the B-team of the NC, can be legitimately accused of betraying the people of Ladakh and Ladakhi leadership, which had been striving to the hilt to achieve the UT status for their region since decades," said Prof Hari Om, and added that the people of Ladakh will punish the Congress in the coming election. The local Congress leadership, he said, released 29-poitn manifesto on April 15 that clearly said that it stood for the struggle for a UT status to Ladakh and it was released by none other than the party candidate for Ladakh seat Tsering Samphel, but their Kashmiri counterparts under pressure from the NC, the PDP, the CPI-M and other separatist outfits, rejected the Ladakhis' democratic demand. The people of Ladakh, who remain cut off from rest of the world for months together every year, deserve a special treatment and a dispensation independent of the biased, Valley-centric, pro-separatist and fundamentally communal Kashmiri leadership, said Prof Hari Om, adding that while the Ladakhis stand for unity and integrity of the country and abrogation of pernicious and separatist Article 370, the Congress, the NC, the PDP and the CPI-M not only stand for Article 370 but also for a dispensation that is outside the political and constitutional organization of India. The people of Ladakh, like the grossly discriminated against people of Jammu province, cannot be forced to live under a dispensation that promotes communalism and separatism and insults the national and democratic constituency, said Prof Hari Om, adding the people of these two regions have not given the Kashmiri leadership any mandate to speak for them or determine their socio-economic and political future. Prof Hari Om said that the Congress will have to pay a very heavy price in the election for its dubious communal approach towards the issues facing the people of Cold-desert Ladakh.
"The BJP is the only political party in the country and its Jammu & Kashmir that is religiously committed to granting UT status to Ladakh to empower its people," he said, and added that the BJP has no doubt whatever that the politically conscious Ladakhi electorate would vote overwhelmingly for the BJP candidate from the Ladakh Parliamentary constituency Thupstan Cheewang considering the fact that vote for the BJP will be a vote for UT status for the trans-Himalayan strategic region. He asserted that the Modi wave has also gripped the entire Ladakh region, like the rest of the country, and the people of Ladakh will contribute one seat to the BJP's national kitty. |
