PATNITOP, July 7 : Union Minister and BJP National Executive Member, Dr Jitendra Singh today said that the protagonists of Article 370 were its greatest abusers and accused the Kashmir-centric political parties like National conference (NC) and PDP for selectively raising the bogey of Article 370 when it suited them, but conveniently ignoring it by their convenience.
Addressing the BJP Workshop on the topic of “Abrogation of Article 370″, Dr Jitendra Singh cited striking examples to expose hypocrisy and duplicity of some of the leaders with regard to Article 370. He recalled that in 1975, when the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed emergency in the country and brought in Constitutional Amendment to extend the term of Lok Sabha and State Assembly from 5 years to 6 years, the then Chief Minister of J&K Sheikh Abdullah immediately adopted this amendment without caring for Article 370 but when the same amendment was reversed by Morarji Desai after becoming Prime Minister in 1977 and the term of Lok Sabha as well as State Assembly was reverted back to 5 years, in J&K Sheikh Abdullah used the alibi of Article 370 and special status to ensure that the Assembly term was not reverted back to 5 years and this anomaly also got corrected only after the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5th, 2019.
Similarly, Dr Jitendra Singh cited examples to substantiate how certain laws were immediately picked up by the NC-Congress government, notwithstanding Article 370, while others were not applied for extraneous considerations. For example, he said, the National Conference leaders, raise a lot of hue and cry over the alleged misuse of Centre’s Anti-Terrirosm laws against the people of Kashmir but conveniently forget that it was Farooq Abdullah as Chief Minister who was the first to implement POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act ) in the State of Jammu & Kashmir.
Dr Jitendra Singh urged the historians and analysts to find out why Central laws like Child Marriage Act, POSCO (Protection of Child from Sexual Offences) or Anti-Dowry Act were not implemented under the garb of Aritcle 370. The NC and Congress governments constantly swear by human rights but violated human rights of the society by not implementing these acts. Was this motivated by the tendency to appease certain sections of society for vote bank dividends under the garb of Article 370, he asked.
Abrogation of Article 370, said Dr Jitendra Singh, led to transformation at three levels, constitutional, administrational and developmental. He said, not only the pace of projects was increased but many of the projects like “Shapur-Kandi” and “Rattle Power Project”, which had been stalled by earlier governments got revived after abrogation of Article 370 and Jammu & Kashmir turning into a Union Territory.
Contrary to the predictions made by “prophets of doom” who said that there would be bloodbath, if Article 370 was removed, Dr Jitendra Singh cited figures to state that the number of stone pelting incidents reduced from 2009 in 2019 to 173 in 2021 and only 5 in the first quarter of current year 2022. The incidents of terrorist violence were 417 in 2008 and 255 in 2019 but reduced to 229 in 2021 and 31 in the current year of 2022. On the development front, he said, for example, the pace of road construction increased from 25321 Kilometres to 41141 Kilometres and average mechamadisation of road per day increased nearly four times in the last three years, while within three years, Jammu & Kashmir was ranked number 4 in the country for PMGSY road construction and district Udhampur was ranked 1 in PMGSY road construction.
Referring to way forward, Dr Jitendra Singh quoted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to invoke Amrit Mahotsava and said in the next 25 years, Jammu & Kashmir with its vast unexplored potential and unexplored Startup potential has the opportunity to play an important role in building the future economy of India before the country reaches the world pedestal in 2047.
Dr Jitendra Singh called for greater awareness among people to make them realise the transformation that has happened after abrogation of Article 370 and also to motivate the youth to undertake Startup initiatives like their counterparts in other parts of the country.
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