Sumit Sharma
JAMMU, Feb 10: With ex-Minister for Health Shabir Khan evading arrest, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today trained guns on Deputy Chief Minister, who holds the charge of School Education, seeking inquiry into allegations of murder and alleged illicit affair with three women.
The allegations had been levelled by highly influential and powerful Forest guard turned Additional Public Relations Officer (APRO) Kewal Sharma of Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand, during a press late night press conference. If sources are to be believed, Kewal had later retracted. However, BJP choose to make it an issue in the last budget session of the NC-Congress coalition government.
It all began in the central hall of the legislative assembly. BJP MLA from Reasi Baldev Raj Sharma, supported by his colleagues raised the issue. He referred to allegations leveled by the PRO of Deputy Chief Minister and said that a probe should be ordered at the earliest. The demand was backed by furious BJP MLAs who were on their feet demanding action against the Deputy Chief Minister
BJP MLAs staged walkout demanding probe against Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand for his alleged involvement in murder and alleged abortion of three women. They also demanded questioning of his PRO namely Kewal Sharma. The protest by the BJP MLAs started amid the Governor's address to both houses of the Assembly.
As soon as Governor's address started, the voice from different corner of the BJP camp started raising which later took the shape of storm, forcing Governor to face hardship. Demanding high level probe, the BJP MLAs said that the Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand has been acting like a puppet at the hands of his PRO, the reason well known to him, which needs to be probed.
Comparing him with the ex-Health Minister Shabir Khan, the BJP MLAs said that if the latter was booked and sacked from ministry then why Tara is given privilege, though his own PRO made publicly that three murders took place by the indication of DyCM. They also alleged that not only this, his PRO also admitted that DyCM made three women pregnant and later made them the subject of abortion.
BJP MLAs later staged walk over on the issue and held protest outside the assembly, pressing government to hand over the issue to police for in-depth investigation. Meanwhile, to register protest against the failure of the state's coalition government on all fronts, BJP activists in hundreds, held massive protest demonstration outside the state assembly and were prevented by the police and barricades from entering the assembly premises and were arrested.
They were led by State President Jugal Kishore Sharma. About half a dozen party activists including Naresh Sharma, Shilpi Verma, Ishtiaq Wani and Sunil Kumar received injuries when the heavy contingent of police posted at Shalimar road adopted heavy handed means to prevent the BJP workers from protesting lawfully and were lathi charged. Naresh Sharma and Raj Kumar were hospitalized for treatment.
Earlier, the party activists had assembled at Indira Chowk and marched towards the assembly secretariat amid slogans with party flags and placards in their hands led by State President, who was accompanied by Leader of Legislative party Ashok Khajuria and other leaders including other senior leaders, state office bearers, district and morcha presidents and Cell convenors.
Jugal Kishore Sharma, while condemning the brutal lathi-charge on the party activists, said that use of force and violence will not cow down and hold back BJP cadre from raising issues of public concern and exposing the government for mis-governance, corruption, discrimination with Jammu and Ladakh regions and plight of refugees, SCs, STs, OBCs, Gujjar, youth, farmers etc.
He said that the state government has completed five years in the office and the party MLAs will seek explanation on the floor of the house for its anti-people, anti-youth and pro-Kashmir policies in the current session of legislature and develop public opinion and pressure to make it comprehend and realize depth of peoples anger against the government on account of their grievances and force it to take effective steps to redress the same.
Meanwhile, over a dozen party activists of Jammu Rural district under District President Sukhdev Singh were arrested from party office at Dream City in Muthi area when they were proceeding towards Jammu to join the assembly gherao march.
Amarnath Gupta, Dr. Jitendra Singh, Chander Prakash Ganga, Usha Choudhary, Kavinder Gupta, Bali Bhagat, Suresh Jamwal, Sat Sharma, Parmod Kapahi, Chander Mohan Gupta, MLAs-Sukhnandan Kumar, Baldev Raj Sharma, Sham Choudhary, Prof. Gharu Ram, Bharat Bhushan, Master Lal Chand and Durga Dass, Sunil Sharma, Munish Sharma, Rajni Sethi, Er. Gulam Ali Khatana, Yudhvir Sethi, Pt. Ashok Kumar, Rajesh Gupta, Chaman Lal Kanathia, Subash Jandial, Daljeet Singh, Shakti Singh Parihar, Gajay Singh, Ravinder Raina, Priya Sethi, Karan Singh, Surinder Bhagat, N.D. Rajwal, Subash Bhagat, Capt. Sambyal, Haji Betab, Vipin Shastri, Sanjay Khanna, Jaidev Rajwal, Subash Gupta, Bashir Ahmed Jagal, Pardeep Sharma, K.B.Mohtra, Ramesh Sharma, Baldev Singh Baloria, Vikram Randhawa, Sanjay Baru, Karan Singh, Ashwani Sharma, Vijay Choudhary, Ashish Sareen, Capt. Kasturi Lal, Parveen Arora, Neeru Anand, Sharda Devi, Jeet Angral, Ayodhya Gupta, Praduman Singh, Kuldeep Kandhari, Sunil Dogra, Sheela Handoo, Gulshan Mahajan, Prem Gupta, Ajay Vaid, Ajit Kumar, Keshav Chopra, Sat Pal Choudhary, Rajinder Singh Chib, Chetan Mehra, Rinku Chauhan and others were prominent among those who were arrested. |
