BHOPAL: It’s not only the Congress party, where cracks appear to have emerged on the issue of revoking Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir. Even the family of a senior and powerful Congress leader in Madhya Pradesh appears divided over the issue.
While former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh attacked the BJP and the Narendra Modi government over the developments on Jammu and Kashmir, his Congress MLA brother Lakshman Singh spoke in a different tone.
Lakshman Singh, the Congress MLA from Chachauda seat of MP’s Guna district, said “Terrorism had risen to such an extent that the government was forced to revoke Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir. Had Pandit Nehru ever imagined that J&K would witness terrorism and strong separatist tendencies, he might have never gone ahead with Article 370 in the province. Rise in terror has forced the repeal of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir.”
Talking to journalists in Guna, the younger of Singh brothers, also justified the creation of bifurcation of J&K by creating Ladakh as a new union territory. “What’s wrong in creating smaller states and UTs. Even Chhattisgarh was created out of MP, Jharkhand out of Bihar and Uttarakhand out of UP.”
Presently, a Congress MLA, Laksman Singh has also been a Lok Sabha member from Rajgarh Lok Sabha seat of Madhya Pradesh between 1996 and 2008, including being a BJP MP from the seat between 2004 and 2008.
His elder sibling and ex-MP CM and Congress’ Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh, however, continued to tweet against the BJP and Narendra Modi government over the J&K issue.
“BJP for narrow politics gains has given a free run to all those who wanted Kashmir to secede from India. May God save Kashmir and Kashmiris. We stand united with them,” the elder Singh tweeted on Tuesday.
Earlier on Monday, the ex-MP CM who lost the recent Lok Sabha polls from Bhopal had tweeted, “A diabolical and dictatorial plan of Modi to finish democracy in Kashmir. No stakeholder knows what’s in store in J&K except Modi, Doval and Amit Shah. We stand with people of Kashmir and Kashmiriyat as strongly as we stand for India and democracy.”