A
day after the release of Hurriyat hardliner Masarat Alam from Baramulla
jail, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on March 15 took a tough stand against
Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed during a rally in Jammu.
Addressing
a rally to mark the golden jubilee of the organisation here, VHP
president Praveen Togadia said, “People of India today feel ashamed for
the remarks of Mufti Sayeed praising Pakistan and separatist Hurriyat
for smooth Assembly polls in J&K.”
Significantly,
RSS sarsanghchalak Brigadier Suchet Singh, BJP state president Jugal
Kishore Sharma and its general secretary (organisation) Ashok Koul as
well as several party legislators attended the event.
Reasserting
that Article 370 of the Indian Constitution will be scrapped, Togadia
said that “two Constitutions and two separate laws will not be allowed
in this country”.
“Let
me tell you that Article 370 will go. It will have to go,” he said.
“The Prime Minister can become MP from any part of the country, but he
cannot contest even municipal corporation elections in Srinagar. We are
not going to tolerate it any more.”
He
said that J&K had acceded to India under similar conditions as
Hyderabad and Junagarh, and asked why, then, it should be given special
status. He also made a strong pitch for granting citizenship rights to
refugees from West Pakistan. “Any government opposed to it is not
acceptable to us,” he said.
Togadia
was visiting the state after nearly three years. He last addressed a
rally in March 2012 in Rajouri town. At the time, the police had filed a
case against him for creating communal tension there. Afterwards,
whenever he came, he was sent back by the state government.
On
Sunday, a charged up Togadia said, “Mufti Sayeed, you should have
thanked the people of the state who have made you CM… The people of
India are not going to tolerate it. You should work for taking the state
on a path of peace, progress and prosperity, otherwise they will catch
hold of you by the ear and make you sit at home.”
Asking
Mufti to apologise for his remarks, he added, “Are you going to contest
the next Assembly elections in Pakistan?… You are sitting in power at
the mercy of Hindus.”
Demanding
that Alam be re-arrested, he said, “Do not fool people that he has been
let off by taking legal recourse. How was he in jail earlier? Raising
slogan of ‘Go India, go’ on Indian soil amounts to treason and the only
punishment for such people is hanging.”
He
also said Sayeed was going to commit another mistake by recruiting
surrendered terrorists into the police. “By doing so, are you going to
create a Pakistani army in the state police? The task of removing him
from office rests with nationalist people of Jammu in case he continues
with such decisions,” he added.
Asking
the CM to focus on development, Togadia said, “Don’t you want children
to get education, have jobs, become doctors or engineers? Do you want to
ruin their prospects of employment, progress and prosperity by creating
Islamic terrorism in the state?”
“If Pakistan had any brain, it too would have created IITs and IIMs,” he added.
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