Irked by objections raised by the Centre and the Jammu and Kashmir government over its plan to hoist the national flag in Srinagar on Republic Day, the BJP on Sunday accused both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Omar Abdullah government of “surrendering” to separatists. They are displaying “disproportionate and panic reaction,” it added.
Criticising the main Opposition, the Prime Minister had on Saturday said, Republic Day is not the occasion to play politics and do anything, which is “divisive”. Firing a salvo at Dr Singh, senior BJP leader L.K. Advani said that his party was “not trying to score a political point”.
“Instead we are challenging the separatists who had vowed to block the party’s plan to hoist the tricolour. And the state is surrendering to them,” he lamented.
“If the rationale for the prohibitory orders is apprehension of breach of peace, curbs should be targeted towards those who have declared that they will not let the tricolour be put up at Lal Chowk. And certainly not against those who have been repeatedly asserting that they will peacefully, and respectfully, unfurl the tricolour at Lal Chowk,” Mr Advani wrote in his latest blog posting titled “Let not the state surrender to separatists”.
Dubbing the decision of the Omar government not to allow the BJP to hoist flag at Lal Chowk as “perverse”, Mr Advani said the government should realise the “enormity of the shame our authorities are inviting for themselves” by their move.
Echoing the sentiments expressed by Mr Advani, Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, said, “The government has arrested members of Bharatiya Yuva Morcha. They have sealed all border points in Jammu and Kashmir to prevent their entry. This is unacceptable and undemocratic.”
Asserting that party activists have already travelled through 11 states and will hoist the flag in the Himalayan state, Mr Jaitley said, by doing so “they have surrendered to the separatists. He also slammed the “curbs” against the activists of Bharatiya Yuva Morcha, the BJP’s youth wing, by the state government.
Noting that Dr Singh’s statement is regrettable, Mr Jaitley asked, “How can the Prime Minister think that hoisting a flag will divide the nation?”