Omar taking leaf out of Nehru’s incompetence: BJP MP

PANAJI - Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is repeating history by taking a leaf out of late prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s incompetence, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP said here Monday.

Anurag Thakur, an MP from Himachal Pradesh’s Hamirpur constituency, said Abdullah was trying to hide his incompetence in governance by siding with Kashmiri separatists.

“Omar Abdullah is betraying the nation to cover up his own bad governance which has seen countless law and order situations and 1,200 and more instances of stone throwing,” Thakur said while addressing a press conference here as part of ‘India - First’, a campaign aimed at creating nationwide awareness on the prevailing situation in Kashmir.

Thakur is also the president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM).

The BJP MP said the young chief minister’s incompetence matched that of late Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

“Then home minister Sardar Patel managed to get most of the princely states to join the Indian Union, while Nehru could not handle the one responsibility of ensuring that Jammu and Kashmir successfully joined India. Look at the mess Nehru has created,” Thakur said.

Elaborating on the ‘India First’ campaign, Thakur said that Indian youth should proudly call Jammu and Kashmir as one of their own, a sentiment which the central government, especially the prime minister’s office was unable to convey.

“The Congress government has failed on the Jammu and Kashmir front. It is falling prey to the whims and fancies of a few separatists who do not stand for the whole of Kashmir,” he said.

Omar Abdullah had recently said in the state assembly that Jammu and Kashmir had acceded to India and not merged with the Indian Union.