Madhav takes back dig at J&K parties
BJP LEADER RETRACTS AFTER ABDULLAH DARES HIM TO PROVE ALLEGATION
In a major embarrassment to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), its leader Ram Madhav was yesterday forced to retract his statement that Mehbooba Mufti’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Omar Abdullah’s National Conference (NC) came together to stake claim to form a government in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), at the behest of Pakistan.
This happened after Abdullah dared BJP’s J&K incharge Madhav to prove the allegation.
Madhav had said that both NC and PDP boycotted the local body elections last month because they had instructions from across the border. “Probably, they had fresh instructions from across the border to come together and form the government in state. What they did prompted the Governor to look into the whole issue. That’s why the Governor dissolved the legislative assembly,” Madhav had tweeted.
NC leader and former J&K Chief Minister Abdullah took offence to the statement and asked Madhav to prove the allegation. “You have Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) at your command. So, have the guts to place evidence in the public domain. Don’t practice shoot and scoot politics. If you don’t have evidence, be man enough to apologise,” Abdullah replied to Madhav’s tweet.
Madhav then took back his comment stating that he did not mean to offend Abdullah. “Since Omar Abullah has denied any external pressure to form government with Congress and PDP, I take back my comment,” Madhav tweeted.
‘Unholy alliance’
On Wednesday, Governor Satyapal Malik dissolved the state legislative assembly despite Congress, PDP and NC joining hands and Mufti staking claim to form the government.
Meanwhile, former state deputy CM Kavinder Gupta also claimed that NC, PDP and Congress came together “on the directions of Pakistan”.
“These forces were against grassroots democracy and came up with an unholy alliance. Clearly, they joined hands at the behest of Pakistan,” BJP leader Gupta said. hen a Hindu mob tore down a 1528 mosque in the northern Indian town of Ayodhya in 1992, Haji Mahboob Ahmad says he and his family had to flee to a Muslim religious school kilometres away to escape deadly rioting.
In days of communal clashes that followed more than a dozen people were killed in Ayodhya and about 2,000 people across the country. Ahmad said when he returned to his house, about 1.6km south of the disputed site, it had been gutted by fire.
Now leaders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its affiliates are stepping up efforts to build a massive Hindu temple where the mosque once stood, and Ahmad and many ■ of the other 5,000 Muslims still living in the town say they once again feel under siege.
“They’re playing a dangerous game in the name of Ayodhya,” Ahmad, a 65-year-old Muslim community leader, said as he sat beside his rifle-toting police guard. Ahmad has been getting round-the-clock police security since months after the riots.
“This is the biggest build-up