Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, June 25: Stating that BJP wants to use Kashmir as part of its election strategy for the next Lok Sabha elections, CPI (M) leader and MLA Kulgam, Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami today said that BJP chief, Amit Shah’s speech in Jammu on June 23 shows desperation of the Saffron party.
Till yesterday the BJP leadership would praise its alliance partner PDP in Jammu and Kashmir, Tarigami said in a statement issued here today. What happened all of a sudden that they (BJP) are now repeating the same allegations in the 2014 election campaign? In 2014, the rhetoric of ignoring Jammu and Ladakh regions is now being repeated after four years, he added.
One may ask the BJP that if, according to them, Jammu and Ladakh was being neglected in development in the last more than three years of its alliance with the PDP, why didn’t they raise the issue then. All the MPs, most of the MLAs and ministers from Jammu and Ladakh were from the BJP. Why didn’t they settle the issue of so-called injustice with Jammu and Ladakh then? Why the BJP is raising hue-n-cry now, he questioned?
The CPI (M) leader said Shah’s speech in Jammu gives an impression as if the previous Government did everything for Kashmir. Reality is before everybody what the previous Government, of which BJP was part, did in Kashmir. People were killed, injured, jailed, blinded and maimed. The credibility of the institutions was eroded, corruption, nepotism and mis-governance was at its peak. The sufferings of Kashmiris were compounded in the last three years, he added.
He said the reality is that both the PDP and the BJP failed to deliver on their poll promises miserably. Now the BJP is trying to project itself as the messiah of the people of Jammu and Ladakh and accusing the PDP of doing everything for Kashmir which they never did. It is a political gimmick which people of the State fully understand. Both the PDP and the BJP need to answer before the people of the State and the country for their failures on all fronts, he added.
Tarigami said the two parties had forged the “alliance of extremes” in 2015 with a promise to bridge the chasm between Muslim-majority Kashmir and predominantly-Hindu Jammu region. But the reality is, when the alliance ended, the polarisation in the politically sensitive State is at an all-time high. Now, the BJP is trying to polarize the State further for electoral gains.
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