Early Times Report
bengaluru, Apr 3: Senior BJP leader and Deputy Chief Minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government Nirmal Singh on Friday took an ambiguous stand on Article 370. Nirmal Singh, who was in Bengaluru (Karnataka) to participate in the two-day national executive committee meeting of the party, was talking to the correspondent of Aaj Tak. "The BJP and the PDP took two months to formulate Agenda of Alliance. We are trying to understand each other. We have to accommodate each other. Our main job is to provide a strong and stable government based on the Agenda of Alliance," said Nirmal Singh.
When asked "whether Article 370 is still on the agenda of the BJP" and "whether the BJP will abrogate it," Nirmal Singh said, "Article 370 is still on the BJP agenda, but right now we are focusing on the Agenda of Alliance". "We do not have 44+ seats in the assembly. It is not the BJP government. It is coalition government," he said. When pressed further to make its stand on Article 370 clear, Nirmal Singh said, "if we get 44+ seats in the assembly, we will think about it". He did not say the BJP government, if formed in the state will abrogate it. He only said, "We will see". He gave a vague reply, thus indicating the party's ambiguity.
Interestingly, the Vision Document of the BJP, which was released to press when the election process in Jammu and Kashmir was already on and has now become redundant, made no reference to Article 370. Nor did it talk about the laws which were needed to combat militancy in the state. Its manifesto, according to reports, did talk about this Article as well as anti-terror laws and said that "the BJP would facilitate debate on it to find if it had benefited the state and its people of harmed both of them". However, according to the same reports, "the party high command did not allow the local leadership to release the manifesto", an action which had not gone down well with the local BJP leadership. They had described the decision as a "sad climb down".
"The party high command," as per of the reports of the time, "took the decision following the opposition of Hina Bhat to the reports that the BJP had included Article 370 in the election manifesto". Hina Bhat had threatened that "she, like other Kashmiris, will pick up gun if the BJP decided to abrogate Article 370" and stated that "there will not be any reference to Article 370 in its election manifesto". "Wait for the release of the party's election manifesto and then ask me about Article 370," she had very confidently said. The undeclared pre-poll ally of the BJP, separatist-turned-politician Sajad Lone of the Peoples Conference, had also declared that his party would not allow anyone to abrogate or amend Article 370.
The decision of the BJP high command not to rake up the issue of Article 370 had shocked many for obvious reasons. They had said that "it appeared that the BJP had also tuned secular in its bid to get a few Muslim votes in the Valley". Even senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy only recently commented on the issue and tweeted to the effect that "After an in-depth investigation I find that Mufti is relying on Article 370 bandookwali Hina Bhat to deliver BJP on a platter".
The BJP is doing no good to itself, the people of the state and the country as a whole by adopting a vague approach towards an issue that is of great national importance. It is only becoming an object of contempt and ridicule by not respecting the core of its ideology. |
