news details |
|
|
| Reveal your Kashmir plan, BJP asks Delhi | | |
Jammu/New Delhi, 26: While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s upcoming Kashmir visit is being seen as watershed in revival of peace discourse, the main national opposition party Bhartiya Janta Party is voicing concerns on New Delhi’s policy on Jammu and Kashmir.
Senior leaders of BJP, both in Delhi and Jammu, assert that they are averse to dialogue process but want its contours to be known. BJP seems to have taken strong exception to Home Minister P Chidambram’s description of Kashmir as a ‘political problem’.
During his Srinagar visit two weeks back, Chidambram had said that Kashmir is a political issue and needs to be discussed through dialogue. It was the Home Minister’s ‘political’ description which encouraged the separatists join dialogue but BJP and some other parties believe that it was for first time in decades that any top Indian leader or government expressed such an opinion.
Prime Minister is visiting Kashmir on Wednesday. Two days ahead of his most significant visit, the BJP today asked him to clarify his policy on Kashmir as it was a 'question of sovereignty'.
'The prime minister appears too vague about his Kashmir plans. He should make it clear as it is a question of our sovereignty. There is a parliament resolution about Kashmir,' Arun Jaitley, BJP's leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said in New Delhi.
Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram said in Srinagar last fortnight that the central government was working 'on quiet diplomacy' in Kashmir.
On Sunday, Manmohan Singh said he favoured 'practical, pragmatic solutions' to the Kashmir problem and a dialogue with the separatist Hurriyat Conference.
The prime minister, who is visiting Kashmir Wednesday, said he was not going there to 'start negotiations or to engage in negotiations myself'. 'I have always maintained that it is our sincere desire to engage all sections of political opinion in Jammu and Kashmir to find practical, pragmatic solutions to the problems facing the state.'
BJP leaders in Jammu including the veteran Chaman Lal Gupta and state president Ashok Khajuria have been continuously taking exceptions to dialogue process ‘in its present form’ eversince the Home Minister made announcement in Srinagar.
“Recent statement of the Home Minister P. Chidambaram have more complicated the issue, when he said that majority view will be considered and they have a solution but will not disclose. It will amount to reopening the issue of pelvicite and referendum which is dead”, said a senior BJP leader Ramesh Arora. He pointed out that it is not their (government’s) personal problem and BJP will not allow Centre as well as State government to make any compromise beyond the constitution. When we talk that each and every talk should be under the constitution, we mean that constitution as it is and not after changing the same. The proposal of autonomy and self-rule are against the constitution because they will destroy the basic fabric of the constitution.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
