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Wednesday, Aug 13, 2008
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BJP: implement court decisions

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party here on Tuesday reiterated its position that the Amarnath Shrine Board Act under which the board was set up and relevant decisions of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court on the issue must be implemented.

Spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad denied that his party had in any way provoked and stoked the agitation in Jammu and played into the hands of separatists in the Kashmir Valley. He also denied that protesters in the Jammu region enforced an economic blockade on the Valley by blocking the national highway.

Mr. Prasad said his party’s position was clear. “We are for the integrity of Jammu and Kashmir.” He denied that the BJP favoured trifurcation of the State based on religious majority.

“We are not pushing the Valley into Pakistan’s hands. It was after a landslip and a blizzard had killed Amarnath pilgrims in 1996 that the Nitish Sengupta committee was set up. It recommended the setting up of the Amarnath Shrine Board. That was done by the Farooq Abdullah government. Following this there were two judgments of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court on the subject. Those were being implemented when the People’s Democratic Party went back on decisions taken by its own ministers and the Congress caved in.”

He said there was no economic blockade of the Valley. “This was a bogey raised by separatists to justify their march to Muzaffarabad.”

On a reported remark by Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil that there was no need to cause inconvenience to fruit growers and that if Pakistan were to agree there should be no problem in allowing their trucks to go to Muzaffarabad, Mr. Prasad said there was no objection to trade taking place on the Muzaffarabad road, but in the present context it was a “bad signal” as “the Home Minister was talking the language of the separatists.”

Situation mishandled

The BJP view is that the Centre had totally mishandled the situation. “Why wait for 35 days before talking to the Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti in Jammu,” one leader asked.

Another alleged that the PDP, a coalition partner of the Congress, was now with the separatists in Kashmir.

Separately, at a press conference Vishwa Hindu Parishad functionary Pravin Togadia said, “Those Kashmiris who want to cross over to Pakistan should be pushed there and never allowed to come back.”

He was referring to the announcement that fruit growers and some others would ‘march to Muzaffarabad.’

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