NEW DELHI: In his first visit to Jammu after pulling out of J&K’s coalition government, BJP chief Amit Shah on Saturday sought to justify the decision to snap ties with PDP saying former CM Mehbooba Mufti did not pay proper attention to the economic development of Jammu and Ladakh regions.
Shah also came down heavily on the PDP chief for the killing of journalist Shujaat Bukhari and Army soldier Muhammed Aurangzeb.
“In 2014, we had promised equitable development of all regions of the state, and particularly of Jammu and Ladakh at par with the Kashmir valley. But Mehbooba Mufti could not even acquire land for the proposed AIIMS in Jammu. We couldn’t have continued with such a government,” Shah said in a Jammu rally on Saturday.
He added the BJP couldn’t be in power in a state where “an editor is killed and a soldier is abducted and brutally killed”.
Ever since it announced it was pulling out of the J&K government, the BJP has been playing a defensive-offensive strategy to come out politically unscathed from pitfalls of its alliance with the PDP.
In private, BJP leaders admit the alliance with PDP was a misadventure. “We had sought to replicate BJP-Shiromani Akali Dal ties in Punjab to bring separatist sympathiser PDP to the mainstream. Our aim was to find lasting peace in the valley. But we couldn’t help the drift in the ties and the larger aim became increasingly faint,” said a senior BJP leader.
According to political observers, the BJP’s plan is to drum up support for Modi’s ‘muscular image’ in the 2019 elections with an aggressive Kashmir policy where security forces would actively hunt down militants.
Congress, LeT on same page: Shah
Lashing out at Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad for purportedly supporting separatists, Shah claimed terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba has issued a statement supporting Azad