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| BJP again hoodwinking people of Jammu province RUSTAM | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Apr 20: The working committee of the state unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) met in Jammu for two days on April 17 and 18. It discussed various issues. Some of them were under-representation of Jammu province in the legislative assembly, unemployment problem, Article 370, 73rd and 74th amendments of the Indian Constitution or Panchayti Raj and issues concerning the refugees from Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, displaced Kashmiri Pandits and backward classes. The working committee also adopted a couple of resolutions, which were released to the press by the party president Shamsher Singh Manhas on Monday (April 19). The focus of these resolutions was mainly on delimitation and youth/unemployment policy.
Releasing the resolutions to the press, Manhas talked about the need of abrogating Article 370. He said abrogation of Article 370 alone could enable the people of the state to enjoy real freedom. However, while reflecting on this Article, he refused to acknowledge that certain elements who had been authorized to draft and give a concrete shape to the manifesto meant for the 2008 assembly elections in the state had deleted from the draft election manifesto that portion which dealt with Article 370 and its negative implications. It was not a mere lapse. The deletion of the portion dealing with Article 370 was deliberate and the portion has been, according to party insiders, had been deleted by those who were close to those running the anti-India and the US-based NGO, called PUGWASH, in India, former Vice-Chancellor of Jammu University Amitabh Mattoo included. Shamsher Singh was the party's one of the three general secretaries then and he knew everything. For, he was a member of the core committee as well as election committee. That he talked of the need of abrogating Article 370, but did not acknowledge the 2008 blunder only shows that the BJP says one thing in public but does exactly the opposite when it comes to the crunch.
The party president also did not refer to the views of the former Prime Minister and BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Article 370. He should have told media persons that the BJP did not like the former Prime Minister because he had announced in Kashmir just on the eve of general elections in India that "Article 370 shall always remain an integral part of the Indian Constitution". He should have also acknowledged that the BJP high command committed a blunder of sorts by not including the demand for the abrogation of Article 370 in the common minimum Programme, which was adopted by the BJP in 1998 after entering into an unholy alliance with those political parties whose political ideology and social philosophy was altogether different from that of the BJP. To say that Shamsher Singh Manhas was not aware of all this would be to cross the Lakshman Rekha. He knows everything.
The president of the state unit of the BJP not only suppressed these facts, but he also did not refer to the March 1999 meeting between the then Indian Foreign Minister and Vajpayee's point-man Jaswant Singh (now no more in the BJP) and his Pakistani counterpart in Colombo and the decision they arrived at. Both of them had worked out a solution, which, if implemented, would have, among other things, meant two main things - division of Jammu province on communal lines along the Chenab river or implementation of the Dixon formula or Chenab formula and grant of "maximum possible autonomy to Kashmir and its adjoining areas". The Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers had agreed to meet again within a month to give a concrete shape to the solution worked out a Colombo and the same was to be implemented in a time span of 4/5 years. The formula could not be implemented because of two reasons - Pakistani intrusion in Kargil in 1999 and the defeat of the BJP in the 2004 general elections.
All this shows that the BJP is not committed to abrogating Article 370. Instead, it shows that the BJP believes in double-speak and rabble-rousing and its only agenda is to play with the people's sentiments or arouse popular passions for the sake of vote-bank politics. Its whole approach to the issues of Article 370 and national integration is based on the politics of bluff. Left to the BJP stalwarts, they could go to any extent to accommodate not just the Muslim identity politics in Kashmir but also the Pakistani evil designs on Jammu and Kashmir. This is the BJP. (To be concluded)
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