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Congress leaders in Jammu back shrine land movement

JAMMU: Key Congress leaders from the Jammu region have called on their party’s central leadership to support the Shri Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti, the controversial Hindu-nationalist coalition that has been spearheading the region’s increasingly violent shrine-land movement.

“We hope to impress upon our high command that the Samiti has the unconditional support of all sections of the people of Jammu,” Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Council member R.S. Chib told The Hindu on behalf of a powerful regional party caucus that includes half-a-dozen Ministers of the Congress-People’s Democratic Party alliance government.

Mr. Chib said that the group, who flew to New Delhi on Friday afternoon, would ask the party’s central leadership to back the restoration of a government order allowing the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board to use forest land to accommodate pilgrims.

In addition, Mr. Chib said the group would seek to clear misinformation about the Samiti.

He lashed out at party spokesperson Manish Tewari, who recently said the Samiti and the secessionist All Parties Hurriyat Conference were two faces of the same coin. Mr. Tewari’s statements were irresponsible and ill-informed, Mr. Chib said.

Several members of the Jammu Congress group had offered their resignations from the State cabinet in 2005, after the then-chief minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, had refused to sanction land to the Shrine Board. Later, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court had passed orders compelling the government to allow the Board use of the land.

Members of the Jammu Congress group were also instrumental in compelling the Congress central leadership to reject Mr. Sayeed’s efforts to continue as Chief Minister after the end of the three-year term mandated by a power-sharing deal.

Congress leaders in Jammu have been under intense pressure in recent weeks. While most of them have supported the Samiti, anger against the party’s central leadership has led to mob violence, including an attack on the former Deputy Chief Minister, Mangat Ram Sharma, on Thursday.

The Jammu Congress initiative has come a day before a committee appointed by Governor N.N. Vohra is scheduled to meet Samiti leaders in an effort to hammer out a compromise on the shrine land issue.

The former Chief Secretary, Sudhir Bloeria, who heads the committee, is expected to advocate a four-point formula, involving restoration of the Shrine Board’s land-use rights in return for the inclusion of more ethnic-Kashmiri members in the body and some amendments to the Act governing its functioning. In particular, the government hopes to head off criticism of the deal by Islamists in Kashmir, by introducing an amendment that the head of the Shrine Board will be state subject.

Sources in the Samiti said that while they accepted reconstitution of the Shrine Board was the prerogative of the Governor, they would reject the government’s efforts to amend the Act.

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