Swaraj, Jaitley arrested as BJP marchers enter Jammu and Kashmir (Third Lead)
By IANSTuesday, January 25, 2011
LAKHANPUR - More than 300 BJP workers, including top leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, entered Jammu and Kashmir as part of the party’s controversial flag-hoisting march to Srinagar and were arrested for violating orders prohibiting gathering of five or more people.
The BJP workers showed the victory sign as they crossed Lakhanpur bridge across Ravi river from Punjab and declared that they have entered Jammu and Kashmir as promised.
“We are here in Jammu and Kashmir, this is a slap on the government that showed its fascist tendencies by deporting us yesterday,” said Swaraj before she was arrested.
The authorities had imposed prohibitory orders, banning assembly of five or more people, in Kathua district that borders Punjab Monday night.
Holding aloft the national flag and shouting slogans, the first batch of 500 BJP Ekta Yatra marchers entered Jammu and Kashmir from Punjab, removing the police barricades put up to stop them.
The marchers chanted slogans like Bharat Mata Ki Jai and Lal Chowk Jayenge (We’ll march to Lal Chowk in Srinagar).
The march is led by Anurag Thakur, president of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP. Around 2,000 BJP youth wing workers and leaders have gathered in Madhopur, at the other end of the bridge in Punjab to enter Jammu and Kashmir as part of their planned flag-hoisting in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk on Republic Day Wednesday.
Some of the BJP activists were loaded into buses and taken to an undisclosed destination.
“Crossed the bridge. The road is blocked. We have been stopped,” BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, who is leading the march, tweeted.
The controversial march to the state battling a separatist campaign since 1989 is planned to culminate at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk, a historic square witness to many political events of the troubled state, including first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s address in 1947.
Amritsar MP Navjot Singh Sidhu is to lead the second batch of marchers later in the evening.
The Jammu and Kashmir government has not given permission for the BJP’s march, Ekta Yatra or the national unity march, for it believes that it may reignite tension in the state where calm has prevailed after months of unrest and deadly street protests last summer.
