Jammu-Kashmir BJP unit to boycott visiting interlocutors

JAMMU - Even as the Central Government appointed three-member team of interlocutors on Jammu and Kashmir is seeking to interact with all shades of opinion, the State unit of Bharatiya Janata Party has decided to boycott it.

Addressing a news conference here on Wednesday, the BJP State unit chief Shamsher Singh Manhas said, the party has taken this decision in view of several “irritating utterances” made by the interlocutors, especially Dileep Padgaonkar, on Kashmir and Pakistan.

Manhas said the three interlocutors have raised doubts about their credibility by making utterances as “Kashmir dispute” and saying that dialogue was necessary with Pakistan, thereby, hurting the sentiments of nationalist forces in the State.

“Their statements appear as pre-judging the issues pertaining to Jammu and Kashmir,” he stated.

He said instead of talking about taking back the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), for which Parliament has passed a unanimous resolution in 1994, the visiting interlocutors seem to be addressing the secessionist and separatist elements in the tate.

“One wonders whether they are representing India or Pakistan,” he added.

During the press conference, Manhas chose to point out that the interlocutors met jailed inmates and pro-separatist and Hurriyat leaders in Kashmir, “which again indicates that they are not pursuing the mandate given to them for meeting all shades of opinion in the State.”

Demanding abrogation of Article 370 granting special status to Jammu and Kashmir, Manhas said, “Continuance of this Article has induced a sense of separatism among some sections of people as a result of which we have been facing problems in the state.

“There is no need to have separate Constitution and separate flag for J and K and it should become a part of the country as any other state in India,” he asserted and appealed to different political parties and people in Jammu to boycott the interlocutors during their stay in the winter capital. (ANI)