Jammu discriminated and Kashmir favoured: Jaitley

THE POINT BEING: Arun Jaitley says India should not compromise on Kashmir.

      

Ads by Google

ibnlive.com is on mobile now. Read news, watch videos
be a Citizen Journalist. Log on to m.ibnlive.com NOW!

Related Stories

• Jammu tense still, protests over land grant row on

• Jammu happy, Kashmir upset at shrine land row accord

• All-party talks fail, no solution to Amarnath land row

Photogallery

Find us on Facebook | Join IBNLive community

Stay ahead with G-Talk Buddy | Click now!

  

Is the BJP guilty of stoking the separatism in Jammu and Kashmir by its chase of an electoral agenda? Has the BJP’s wrong timing helped fan separatist beliefs in the valley? Did the BJP not initiate the economic blockade of the valley and if yes, why? These were some of the questions Karan Thapar put to BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley on Devil’s Advocate.

Karan Thapar: Let us start with the BJP’s role in Jammu. How do you justify the fact that the party that preaches nationalism is deliberately pursuing a policy that is inflaming separatism in the Kashmir valley?

Arun Jaitley: I think you are being too naïve when you ask this question. Do you seriously think that the separatists in the Valley have re-launched the separatist movement because of the land issue?

Karan Thapar: Absolutely!

Arun Jaitley: Absolutely not!

Karan Thapar: They’ve been given the opportunity because of the land issue.

Arun Jaitley:Absolutely not and let’s not be naïve. We have been naïve for the last sixty years…those who subscribed to that thought and I won’t be naïve. Let me answer it. First, the separatists lied to the whole country and to the whole world, saying that Hindu colonisation would come up in the Valley. There was no body in the Valley, not even the state government or the Central government that countered that propaganda.

The separatists lied to the whole world saying that there was an economic blockade. Nobody was willing to counter that. We are ones who are countering it. And today we are the ones who are saying that the land transfer is pursuant to a law enacted by the state legislature, pursuant to a direction of the high court. Why should it not be implemented?

Karan Thapar: Alright, I let you speak and let you have your say in full without interrupting. Now let me reply. First of all, it wasn’t the separatists alone who reacted to the land transfer. The PDP and the National Conference, who are not separatists, were just as there.

Arun Jaitley:That’s the tragedy.

Karan Thapar: Well, that’s a fact.

Arun Jaitley:That’s a tragic fact.

Karan Thapar: But it’s a fact, all the same. The second point is that there was a blockade. Figures released by the Jammu and Kashmir horticultural department, which is a part of the official government, prove that between the first of August and the 17th of August this year, only 890 trucks bearing fruit came from Srinagar to the Banihal pass where as last year during the same dates, the figure was 2,148—a fall of nearly sixty per cent.

Arun Jaitley:Let’s be very clear. If there is a bandh and a curfew in Jammu for 50 days, if you have a curfew in the Valley for 30 days plus, business is bound to go down. Please, I have gone to the Valley myself. We asked the Army and the district administration as to what is the position. They gave us the daily figures. This was not the apple season.

They said, we have nothing lying in the stocks and today we have 90 trucks waiting at the sabzi mandis, and there is nothing to be loaded on it. It was a false propaganda. Any fall in traffic could be because of the bandh and the curfew. The fall in traffic was not because of any economic blockade.

Karan Thapar: The fall in the traffic was because your ministers of the Punjab government, Manoranjan Kalia and Mohanlal, were actively creating a blockade at Madhopur. Both of them camped at Pathankot. More importantly, they personally obstructed trucks from Jammu and Kashmir. You cannot deny that.

Arun Jaitley: That is totally incorrect.

Karan Thapar: They haven’t denied that, how can you?

Arun Jaitley:I am denying it for the reason—that there were protests in Jammu and in Punjab which led to the disruption of traffic. The BJP and the Akali Dal leadership in Punjab personally intervened and said: protest on any road but not on the highway because the highway would lead to a stoppage of traffic. Any stoppage on a road because of a protest is not a blockade.