The BJP leader and Union home minister reiterated that the central government will restore J&K’s statehood at an ‘appropriate time’ after the election.
Addressing a rally on the second and final day of his visit to Jammu in poll-bound Jammu and Kashmir, BJP leader and Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday asked the Congress and National Conference (NC) to ‘stop fooling people in the name of statehood.’
“The Congress and NC are saying that they will restore statehood. Tell me, who can give it (statehood)? Only the central government and prime minister Narendra Modi can. So stop fooling the people. We have said that at an appropriate time after the election, we will give statehood to Jammu and Kashmir. We have said this in Parliament. Rahul Gandhi should stop misleading the people,” Shah said.
He also asserted, citing his ‘experience’ as a ‘student of electoral politics,’ that a Congress-NC government – they have teamed up for the assembly election – ‘can never be formed in Jammu and Kashmir.’
The home minister, who released BJP’s manifesto for the Union territory on the previous day, also sent a ‘message’ to ex-Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha.
“I want to tell you (Gandhi), no matter how much effort you put in, we will not let the reservation of Gujjars, Bakarwal, Paharis, and Dalits, be touched. There will be no talks with Pakistan,” Shah declared.
The upcoming election, the former BJP president remarked, will be ‘historic,’ as for the ‘first time,’ J&K will ‘vote under the tricolour.’ The Jammu and Kashmir flag lost its official status with the August 2019 abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution of India by the Modi government.
For its first assembly election since December 2014, J&K will poll on September 18, 25, and October 1. The counting is on October 8.
