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| Study Group's Proposed Visit | | Even after 65 years of accession BJP ignorant about J&K | | NEHA
JAMMU, May 23: Member of Lok Sabha and former BJP national president Rajnath Singh-led 6-member Study Group of Parliamentarians would visit Jammu & Kashmir for five days for an on-the--spot assessment of the situation as it prevails in different parts of this sensitive border state. The visit would commence on May 28. This would be the Study Group's second and final visit to the state. The other prominent members of the Study Group include Ravi Shankar Prasad, J P Nadda, Avinash Rai Khanna, Maya Singh and Bhupinder Yadav, all MPs.
The study Group was constituted way back in 2011 and it visited the state the same year in April at a time when 7 of the 11 BJP MLAs had shocked everyone in Jammu and cross-voted to ensure the victory of the Congress and NC candidates seeking election to the Legislative Council, a development that had caused embarrassment to the visiting team. The Study Group, which also had on it national BJP spokesperson and Member of Lok Sabha Shah Nawaz Hussain, had then spent two days in Kashmir and Ladakh and two days in the state's winter capital Jammu.
The Study Group was constituted by the party high command to prepare its own report on the situation in Jammu & Kashmir and it had taken this decision after the Government of India had already appointed three interlocutors to study the issues facing the people of the state and suggest ways and means aimed at resolving all these issues and restoring peace and calm in the disturbed state. The interlocutors submitted their report on October 12, 2011 to the Government of India and it has not been made public as yet for reasons best known to the authorities in New Delhi. However, reports in the various national dailies as well as the articles written and interviews given by the interlocutors suggest that they have recommended that Article 370 should be made a permanent feature of the Indian Constitution and that nothing should be done to dilute the special status which the state enjoys in the Union. The reports and their writings and interviews have also suggested that they have based their recommendations on the National Conference's autonomy committee report, People's Democratic Party's self-rule document, Sajjad Lone's Achievable Nationhood and so on.
Any way, the interlocutors are not the subject of study at the moment. The issue under reference is the proposed visit of the BJP Study Group to the state. The group, according to media reports, will not only study the prevailing political situation in the state but would also the aspirations of the people inhabiting different parts of the state and submit their final report to the national BJP president Nitin Gadkari.
"The Group will come out with a vision document within two months of this visit. The Study Group members will undertake the visit in two sub groups," the state BJP yesterday said.
It is indeed surprising that those who control the BJP at the national level are not aware of the ground situation in the state, as also not aware of the political aspirations, needs and compulsions of the people inhabiting different regions of the state even after 65 years of the state's accession to India. It is surprising all the more because the Jana Sangh/BJP virtually owes its origin to Jammu, as also because the state in general and Jammu province in particular, has remained the principal centre of the RSS activities.
Even a naïve knows that while the Kashmiri leadership stands for separation from India, the people of Jammu and Ladakh stand for the state's full merger with India and abrogation of article 370 of the Indian Constitution. He knows that while the problem in Kashmir is communal and not political and economic, the problem in Jammu and Ladakh is political and economic in nature. The Kashmiri leadership yearns for a separate dispensation on the ground that Jammu and Kashmir is a Muslim-majority state and that it cannot have any kind of truck with democratic and secular India. The people of Jammu and Ladakh, on the other hand, yearn for complete integration into India, saying they will accept only that reform that brings the state closer to New Delhi and empower them to shape and mould their socio-economic and political future in India and under the Indian Constitution. Even a naïve knows that the Kashmiri leadership vouches for an ideology that excludes all, barring the followers of one particular religious sect, and not even the miniscule minority of Kashmiri Hindus, who have been living in exile since 1990. Even a naïve knows that there exists an extreme form of inter-regional animosities in the state and that the people of Jammu and Ladakh want separation from Kashmir because they cannot do any business with the sectarian Kashmiri leadership, as also because the Kashmiri leadership is out-and-out Valley-centric.
That the BJP constituted a Study Group to know what are the issues facing the State of Jammu & Kashmir is a sad reflection on those who have been running the party affairs. What is even more shocking is the failure of the state BJP leadership to keep the party high command well informed about what had been happening in the state for decades and about the nature of the ongoing movement in Kashmir as well as problems the people of Jammu and Ladakh had been facing both at the hands of New Delhi and Kashmiri leadership and its henchmen in Jammu ever since 1947. This precisely is the reason why the state BJP leadership has failed to win over the people. |
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