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PM reviews Jammu and Kashmir situation

NEW DELHI: Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday accused the United Progressive Alliance government of being “directionless and a failure” in handling the situation in Jammu and Kashmir on the Amarnath shrine imbroglio , Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reviewed the situation with senior Cabinet colleagues.

Dr. Singh held prolonged discussions with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Defence Minister A.K. Antony, Home Minister Shivraj Patil and senior officials of the government to find an “amicable solution.”

“Both the government and the Congress party are anxious to end the stalemate in Jammu and Kashmir and find an amicable solution,” AICC spokesman Shakeel Ahmed told The Hindu.

He said Mr. Mukherjee, who heads a Congress Core Group on Jammu and Kashmir, apprised the Prime Minister of the two meetings held last week to suggest a solution. Among others, party leaders, Mr. Antony, Mr. Patil, Saifuddin Soz, Prithviraj Chavan, Karan Singh, M.L. Fotedar, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Ahmed Patel, political secretary to party president Sonia Gandhi, are members.

On the other hand, BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Saturday charged the government with “indulging in appeasement of separatists” in the Kashmir Valley, on the Amarnath shrine controversy, that led to a grim and violent situation.

Talking to media persons here, Mr. Jaitley said the government had been a “complete failure” in handling the situation ever since agitations broke out in the State. “The separatists were on the lookout for such an opportunity in the Valley and the government, by sheer mishandling and by giving an impression of suffering from paralysis, had given the separatists what they wanted. There was no move to counter this separatist propaganda which had led to the present grim situation in the State,” he said.

Accusing the Congress of being in “questionable company” in the Valley, as its former alliance partner, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was one of the parties that joined the protest marches in the Kashmir Valley and “spread the myth of an economic blockade,” he said, “the Government has been directionless in dealing with the situation and its policy has alienated people, both in the Jammu region and in the Kashmir Valley.”

According to him, after the agitations broke out, both the UPA and the Congress, failed to counter the propaganda launched by the separatists that there was an economic blockade in Jammu and that the land was being permanently transferred to the Amarnath Shrine Board.

“The Centre should have gone on record to state that land had been allotted to the shrine board pursuant to the law, and the orders of the High Court. But the Centre collapsed under the initial protests of the separatists and it took almost eight to 10 days for it to react to the situation, by which time it had taken a serious turn.”

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