Rajnath Singh

NEW DELHI: The terror infrastructure in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir must be dismantled before any meaningful confidence-building measure (CBM) between India and Pakistan is implemented, Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh said here on Monday.

Reacting to what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in Nainital about the India-Pakistan Havana statement and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's remarks on the Kargil war in his book, In The Line Of Fire, the BJP chief said the Kargil war was a diplomatic and military victory for India. By winning the war despite the self-imposed restraint of not crossing the Line of Control, India demonstrated that it was a responsible country even while focussing international attention on the cross-border terrorism engineered by Pakistan. Mr. Singhrejected General Musharraf's assertion that Kargil led to the start of the peace process.

Divergent statements

He charged the Prime Minister with "misleading" the country by claiming that cross-border terrorism had declined. This was contrary to what Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had admitted.

The BJP's case was that cross-border terrorism increased under the United Progressive Alliance Government. It was imperative to check cross-border terrorism before taking the peace process forward through more CBMs, Mr. Singh said at a function held to mark the anniversary of Jana Sangh (and BJP) ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya at the party headquarters.

Later in the evening, at a programme to launch a countrywide campaign to create awareness of the role of Vande Mataram in the freedom struggle, he charged the Congress with following a policy of "appeasement of minorities."

Vote bank politics

Mr. Singh alleged that the Congress sowed the seeds of separatism that led to the division of the country; now, it was practising vote bank politics. The appeasement policy manifested fully when the UPA Government announced that the singing of Vande Mataram would not be compulsory on September 7, when the centenary of the national song was celebrated.

If the BJP came to power, it would amend the Constitution to include respect to Vande Mataram a fundamental duty. The BJP organised similar functions in several cities. Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani launched the weeklong campaign in Rajkot, M. Venkaiah Naidu in Mumbai, Sushma Swaraj in Indore and Kalyan Singh in Lucknow.

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