news details |
|
|
| BJP lost Jammu, Ladakh even before elections? | | PM Modi's J&K visit | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Feb 3: PM Narendra Modi's much-hyped J&K visit is over. He reached Leh in the morning, addressed rally at Vijaypur in the afternoon and concluded his visit in Srinagar. He laid foundation stones of many projects, including two AIIMS, one each in Jammu and Kashmir, and also launched the first-ever University of Ladakh.
The local BJP leaders patted their backs and said the BJP government at the Centre treated all the three regions of the state - Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir - equally and didn't discriminate between them. They also took credit for the AIIMS of which the PM laid the foundation stone. They forgot that Jammu got the AIIMS only after a massive agitation and 4-day-long bandh, which paralysed the original capital town of the state, Jammu, and adjoining areas. They also forgot that one very senior BJP leader and minister in the Mufti Sayeed's government had said that "no power on earth can snatch AIIMS from Kashmir". AIIMS had been sanctioned for Jammu, but the PDP-BJP coalition government had transferred it to Kashmir and this had provoked political explosions in Jammu.
Reports emanating from Ladakh and the reactions from cross-sections of society in Jammu suggested that the PM Modi's visit to Jammu and Ladakh had only left them high and dry. The reasons are not far too seek. The people of Ladakh were expecting that the PM will grant divisional status for the region, if not UT status, and reassure them that his government would include Bhoti language in the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution, but nothing of this sort happened. They were also expecting that the PM would speak about Article 370, which was responsible for the woes of the people of the region, but it also didn't happen.
"Developmental projects in the region is fine, but our problem is political that should have been addressed politically. The people of Leh district in particular waned independence from Kashmir, but the PM didn't talk about our political aspirations, needs and compulsions, thus suggesting that the BJP, like the Congress, doesn't consider them an important factor in the state's political situation and that the BJP would not do anything that the Kashmiri leaders don't like," said one very senior LBA leader. But this is the general view in the Buddhist-majority Leh district.
In Jammu, the people's expectations ranged from grant of citizenship rights to refugees from West Pakistan, Valmiki Samaj and Gurkhas to a definite political instrument invested with legislative, executive and financial powers to the deportation of Rohingyas and Bangladeshi to steps aimed at defeating those who were changing Jammu's demography to an employment package to address the issue of unemployment in Jammu to a scheme that could induce internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus to go back to the Valley in their own homeland invested with UT status to a package for the refugees from Pakistan-occupied-Jammu. The PM disappointed them by ignoring all those issues which they considered very crucial for their very survival.
What shocked the people of Jammu all the more was the fact that PM didn't even once oppose those demanding autonomy, self-rule, Pakistan, demilitarization and had been indulging in terror-related and break-India activities since decades.
The point is that the PM's visit to the state only made the separatists and half-separatists feel jubilant because he didn't touch any issue that people of Jammu and Ladakh considered very relevant of national import and separatists and half-separatists considered undesirable for their secessionist movement.
The manner in which the PM dealt with the people of Jammu and Ladakh has further alienated them from the BJP. And if the BJP-watchers are to be believed, then it can be said that the BJP lost both Jammu and Ladakh even before the elections. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
