New Delhi: As the election process is being held in Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP has inducted Ankur Sharma, the national president of the Hindu right-wing Ekam Sanatan Bharat Dal, with the latter announcing that his outfit will be merged with the BJP.
Sharma has in the past opposed nomadic communities such as the Muslim Gujjars and the Bakerwals, claiming that they were engaging in ‘land Jihad,’ filed PILs challenging the extension of minority status to Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir.
Sharma is the founder of IkkJut Jammu, that was declared a political organisation in November 2020.
In the aftermath of the 2018 rape and murder of a minor Bakerwal girl in Kathua, Sharma had approached the Supreme Court seeking a CBI investigation, with his outfit and others also claiming that the Hindu youths arrested in the case were falsely implicated. He had later also represented one of the accused during trial at a sessions court in Pathankot.
In the past, Sharma has also demanded the division of Jammu and Kashmir with Jammu as an independent state and Kashmir valley as two Union Territories, with one of them being for Kashmiri Pandits.
