Amir Tantray
Jammu, Jul 6: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Chief J.P Nadda Saturday asked party leaders in Jammu and Kashmir to gear up for the Assembly elections to make a clean sweep as party has managed to retain both the seats during the Parliamentary elections, which it contested.
By touching almost every issue concerning the union territory on which the BJP at the center led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has delivered, Nadda said that party leaders need to reach out to the public with 10 years of the Modi government which has given Jammu and Kashmir a new direction.
Addressing a jam packed working committee meet at Majestic Grand banquet hall in Mishriwala, in the outskirts of Jammu city, the BJP national president didn’t mince words by touching issues like abrogation of Article 370, 35-A and giving rights to west Pakistani refugees, Valmikis, Gujjar and Paharis.
He asked party leaders to stick to these issues and win the upcoming Assembly elections to form the next government. “Out of 36 assembly segments of Jammu and Udhampur parliamentary seats, party managed lead in 29 segments while in other seven segments margin is low and recoverable with proper sanitation of workers and communication to people.”
“Since the BJP government came at the centre, Jammu and Kashmir has seen a new era of development which was not there during the tenure of National Conference, PDP and Congress. Jammu faced the worst kind of discrimination when these parties were in power but BJP provided justice to various sections of the society. The BJP ways even in hostile circumstances,” he added.
The BJP president started his speech by remembering Shyama Prasad Mukherjee on his birth anniversary and said, “We have a special association with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee but he had a special association with Jammu and Kashmir. I feel honoured to be in Jammu on his birth anniversary,” Nadda said.
Earlier, the BJP’s extended working committee adopted a resolution expressing confidence that the party, based on the Lok Sabha election results in J&K, will conveniently form government in the UT on its own by securing a majority.
“The political target of formation of the government by the party on its own is politically achievable and the people are also looking at the party to form the government in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time,” it read.
The resolution referred to its lead in 29 of the 36 Assembly segments falling in two parliamentary constituencies in Jammu division where its candidates won for the third time in a row. The margin in the other segments where the party could not get a lead is very narrow and it would be recovered in the upcoming Assembly elections, it said.
Expressing gratitude to the people of Jammu region for ensuring that BJP maintained its 100% strike rate by winning both the seats it contested, the working committee said those who preached hatred and instigated the people against abrogation of Article 370 were defeated.
Assuring that BJP will “expose the politics of opportunism by Gupkar Gang or any other new dispensation of opportunistic forces in their new avatar for creating confusion and chaos among the masses”, the committee reaffirmed that “Modi 3.0 government will last full term of five years and will again form the government after the 2029 elections”.
Union minister for coal and mines G. Kishan Reddy who is also the BJP’s in-charge of J&K affairs claimed that a “positive environment and peace” prevail in the UT following the abrogation of Article 370 and it is because of this that “We are sure that support for the BJP will increase in the coming time.”
The BJP’s J&K unit chief Ravinder Raina, however, stated categorically that the party will win the upcoming Assembly elections with a comfortable majority and form the next government in the UT.
At the same time, he urged the party workers and leaders to “work hard and work together” to ensure that J&K gets its first chief minister from the saffron party by winning the next assembly elections on its own.
Prior to the meeting, Reddy told reporters in Jammu, “We are conducting a review after the Lok Sabha elections. We formed the government for the third time. We will discuss the upcoming programs of the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir.”
