Srinagar: The Leader of Opposition (LoP) and Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack on the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a massive election rally in Srinagar on Monday (September 23).
Gandhi targeted the saffron party for “snatching the democratic rights” of Jammu and Kashmir while demanding restoration of statehood in his first election rally in the valley after the three-phased assembly polls started last week following the directions of the apex court.
The rally comes at a time when the Congress is showing signs of revival in Jammu and Kashmir with several party leaders, who had fled to the former party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s nascent political outfit, either returning to the Congress fold in recent weeks and months, or waiting to do so after being disallowed from rejoining the grand old party.
Addressing a massive crowd of thousands of party supporters and workers who had gathered at a playground in Zainakot area of Srinagar’s Shalteng locality, Gandhi said that the BJP was spreading hatred in the country by pitting people of one religion or language against another for electoral dividends.
Recalling the carving out of the states of Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and Telangana from Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh respectively, Gandhi, while referring to the Article 370 move of the BJP-led Union government, said that it was for the first time in India’s history that a state was downgraded into a Union Territory.
“The democratic rights of people of J&K have been snatched after it was converted into a UT. Our party calls upon the BJP to restore your statehood. If they don’t, we will do it,” Gandhi said, evoking applause from the crowd which comprised thousands of youngsters, women and elderly men.
The Congress leader said that the lawmakers were empowered to take decisions on the issues of infrastructure development, health, education and others when J&K was a state.
“But now outsiders have been brought in who make these decisions. An outsider has been installed as the lieutenant governor,” he said, in a veiled reference to the recent amendment which has empowered the lieutenant governor to virtually run Jammu and Kashmir at the whims and desires of the Union government.
Gandhi also accused the BJP-led Union government of shutting down small factories across the country allegedly for the benefit of the industrialists.
The Congress scion reiterated his party’s promise of filling up one lakh vacancies in various departments of Jammu and Kashmir administration if elected to power.
Praising the new J&K Congress chief Tariq Hameed Karra, Gandhi appealed to the voters to elect him to J&K assembly.
Earlier, Karra claimed that it was for the first time that such a huge gathering of political workers had assembled in Srinagar after the 1987 election, which is widely believed to have sparked off the armed insurgency in Kashmir.
Despite blazing heat, thousands of Congress supporters, who had come from different parts of Kashmir, assembled at the Zainakote ground on Wednesday morning to attend their leader’s first election rally in the Valley where the second phase of assembly polls will be held on Wednesday, September 25.
Fokia Jan, a resident of Srinagar’s HMT locality, said that the BJP-led government has let down the people of J&K who have a lot of expectations from the Congress party now.