The Hindu : National : BJP demands “corrective measures” on land issue

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National

BJP demands “corrective measures” on land issue

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani is understood to have told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi that it was for the Centre to initiate “corrective measures” to help cool the protests in Jammu on the issue of land for the Amarnath Shrine Board.

At the banquet hosted at Rashtrapati Bhavan for the visiting Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Monday evening, the BJP leader exchanged views with Dr. Singh, Mrs. Gandhi and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.

Last week Dr. Singh had invited Mr. Advani for an exchange of views at 7, Race Course Road and a few days earlier Ms. Gandhi had telephoned BJP president Rajnath Singh to discuss the same subject.

The BJP’s stand was that it was for the Centre to take some initiative. On Tuesday BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said the BJP would participate in the all-party meeting called by the Prime Minister on Wednesday, but any proposal or suggestion should come from the Government.

Mr. Prasad told reporters that the agitation in Jammu by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-led Sangharsh Samiti had become a “people’s movement” with participation from doctors, lawyers, students, businessmen and ordinary men and women. “It has already left seven people dead,” he said.

He was critical of the “civilian-controlled army” for jamming mobile services in the region and preventing people from using even SMS. “The protests were being suppressed by the police and the army,” he said.

The BJP has stuck to its position that the government had “caved in” to the demands of “separatists” who were the first to protest against giving of land on a temporary basis to the Amarnath Shrine Board to create proper facilities for pilgrims.

“There has been a political consensus in the country for decades that the government makes arrangements for pilgrims of different faiths,” he said.

Asked why the BJP was then protesting the Jammu and Kashmir government’s decision that instead of transferring land to the Shrine Board the State government would provide all the necessary facilities to the pilgrims, Mr. Prasad said, “there was a lot of uninhabited land on the way to the Amarnath Shrine.”

He said it was “mischievous propaganda” that “forest land was to be transferred to the Shrine Board against regulations.” In Kashmir, forest land is used regularly for all development work, he claimed, pointing out that 80 per cent of land in Kashmir was “forest land.” “The decision,” he added, “to give land to the Shrine Board was based on the recommendations of the Nitin Sen Committee.”

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