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| Gandhi report to further damage Congress' poll prospects in Jammu | | Kishtwar communal assault | | Neha
JAMMU, Dec 22: The submission by Justice R C Gandhi (Retd) of his interim report on August 9 communal assault on the minority Hindu community by rogue elements in the majority community has invoked response in Jammu province on expected lines. The BJP, the BSP and many other political organizations, barring the Kashmir-centricoutfits like the NC, Congress, CPI, CPI-M, SP, JDU and the LJP, and the community of lawyers have rejected outrightly the interim report saying it was a report not based on facts but a manipulated report.
While the BJP held demonstrations across Jammu province on Saturday and gave a 48-hour bandh call to register its protest against Justice Gandhi and the NC-Congress coalition government, as also to register protest against the re-induction of Sajjad Ahmad Kitchloo into the Council of Ministers, the Jammu & Kashmir High Bar Association, Jammu, also reacted sharply and decided to strike work on Monday. A number of organizations extended support to the bandh call. The coalition partners in the government also reacted to the report and re-induction of Kitchloo into the Council of Ministers. One Jammu-based NC leader, who always takes an extreme position to remain in the good books of Omar Abdullah and other Kashmir-based NC leaders by brazenly indulging in communal politics, hailed the otherwise roundly condemned report and justified the rehabilitation of Kitchloo, who himself patted his back after taking oath of office saying those who felt jealous of his popularity conspired against him on August 9, the Congress gave its response by maintaining stoic silence and not attending the oath taking ceremony at Raj Bhawan on Saturday at 3 p.m. and this, notwithstanding the fact that many Congress leaders had received invitation letters well on time.
The kind of response the interim report instantly evoked in Jammu province indicates and establishes many things. It vindicates those who had expressed the view that Justice Gandhi will not dispense justice and he will play to the tunes of the vested interests and communal elements in the government and outside. It indicates the official attitude of the minority communities in the state and establishes that the minority communities have to fend for themselves.
It re-establishes the communal credentials of the NC and the Congress. It also shows that while the NC has nothing to lose in Jammu province where it is already unpopular and where its support-base is fast-shrinking with each passing day because of its biased socio-economic and politico-administrative policies and the manner in which it has been willfully neglecting Jammu province, the Congress would suffer further erosion in its support-base in this province with whose support it has been sharing power in the state since November 5, 2002. The BJP, it is clear, would target the Congress, as it its number one political rival in Jammu province. Infact, on Saturday, the BJP targeted the Congress more as compared with the NC and held it responsible for what Justice Gandhi and the NC did. Everyone denounced the Congress as the B-team of the NC and accused it of being hand-in-glove with the communal forces in Kashmir.
The Congress can retrieve some political space it lost during the nine years or so by pulling out of the government, but it will not do that because the Congress Ministers and other elements in the Congress would want this government to complete its six-year term for obvious reasons. All in all, it can be said that the August 9 Kishtwar communal assault would spoil the electoral chances of the Congress party in Jammu province. |
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