After the abrogation of Article 370, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s next agenda appears to be building the Ram Mandir and bringing about a uniform civil code. A hint on this was dropped by BJP national general secretary (Organisation) B. L. Santosh on Friday, while delivering a talk in Bengaluru.
“Abrogation of Article 370, Ram Mandir and uniform civil code have always been emotional issues for us. We never set any deadlines for them. The only question is when we would be able to implement them,” Mr. Santosh said. “Our party took birth not to come to power either in States or at the Centre. It took birth to abrogate Article 370 as per the wish of Syama Prasad Mookerjee,” he said, referring to Mookerjee stepping down as Union Minister and setting up the then Jan Sangh, which later became the BJP.
Appealing to political parties to desist from looking at the Kashmir conflict as a Hindu-Muslim issue, he said the Kashmiri Muslims would now realise what they had lost when Article 370 was in force. He expressed confidence that Kashmir would now open itself to development, while listing the proposals by various institutions and companies to set up higher educational institutions and industries in the valley.
He claimed that at present Kashmir had lesser number of security personnel on the streets than was normal in the valley.
Mr. Santosh maintained that abrogation of Article 370 did not happen due to the overwhelming majority of the BJP in Parliament. “The architects of the Constitution were wise enough to include a provision for abrogation of Article 370 in the very article that provided its enforcement. We just used it,” he said.
