The BJP’s attempt to repeat Murli Manohar Joshi’s 1991-92 Ekta Yatra to hoist the tricolour at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk on Republic Day hit a roadblock on Monday when three of its senior leaders, Mr Arun Jaitley, Mr Ananth Kumar and Ms Sushma Swaraj, were stopped at Jammu airport and asked to return. The party leaders, who
reached Jammu on a chartered flight from New Delhi, were stopped at the airport itself as the authorities imposed prohibitory orders under Section 144 CrPc. BJP workers had gathered in large numbers outside the airport to welcome them.
The BJP’s move to hoist the tricolour at Lal Chowk is being seen as an attempt by the saffron party to address its core ideological votebank and send a clear signal to the RSS, now under intense pressure over the rising allegations about “Hindu terror”. It is well aware that the administration will not allow it to move to Srinagar to hoist the tricolour on Republic Day, so saffron strategists plan to turn its entire agitation into a “symbolic movement”. The BJP now plans to hold nationwide protests at the district level from Tuesday onwards to protest against the “violation of democratic rights”, its spokesman Ravishankar Prasad said.
[A late-night report from Punjab said Mr Jaitley and Ms Swaraj had been escorted by the J&K authorities to Madhopur Bridge on the Jammu-Punjab border. BJP youth activists plan to hold a rally at Madhopur on Tuesday before trying to enter Jammu through Lakhanpur, which has been turned into a heavily-barricaded fortress since Monday morning, with anti-riot vehicles and water cannons and grenade propellers deployed in large numbers.]
In New Delhi, rallying behind Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah, Union home minister P. Chidambaram asked BJP leader Arun Jaitley and party colleagues Sushma Swaraj and Ananth Kumar to drop their plan and return to the national capital. “The BJP leaders wanted to hold a public meeting in Jammu, for which the CM has refused (permission). I have requested the BJP leaders to respect the decision of the state government,” Mr Chidambaram said.
The saffron brigade, which is now trying to turn this into a nationalist affair and an emotive issue, intends to hold a series of agitations to protest against the “treatment” meted out to its top leaders at Jammu airport. Senior BJP leader L.K. Advani spoke to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to lodge a protest. “I talked to the Prime Minister to register a protest over the way the authorities prevented Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, both Leaders of the Opposition in Parliament, from entering Jammu and threatened to deport them back to Delhi,” Mr Advani said. It may be recalled that the Prime Minister had recently asked political outfits to refrain from “scoring political points and use maximum restraint to ensure that peace is not disturbed” in the sensitive state. The BJP has also sought President Pratibha Patil’s intervention. Former party chief Rajnath Singh, who had sat on dharna at Rajghat on Saturday, said: “We urged the President to intervene as two of our senior leaders are being stopped in Jammu.”
As the BJP leaders arrived at Jammu airport, the home minister spoke to both Mr Jaitley and Mr Omar Abdullah. In his talk with Mr Jaitley, Mr Chidambaram requested him to “respect the wishes of the chief minister and return to Delhi to defuse the tension in the state”, sources said. Mr Chidambaram also spoke to Mr Omar Abdullah and took stock of the situation. The CM told the home minister that the two senior BJP leaders would not be allowed to attend a public rally in Jammu as part of the BJP’s controversial yatra programme. The Centre has put at least 30 companies of paramilitary forces at the state government’s disposal to tackle the controversial yatra.
As the BJP leaders were stopped by the security forces, they sat on a dharna inside the airport. Outside, party activists raised slogans against Mr Abdullah’s government and blocked the road next to the building. Speaking to the media at the airport, Mr Ananth Kumar said the district magistrate had asked them to return as soon as they landed at the airport. “It is a draconian situation here. They have almost formed an Emergency-like situation. We will not accept this order as we are free citizens of India and entitled to land in Jammu and participate in our tiranga programme,” he told the media.
The BJP on Monday accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Omar Abdullah government of “surrendering to the separatists”.
Ms Sushma Swaraj, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, who has taken to social networking in a big way to communicate her political views, tweeted on Monday: “We are being deported because we want to fly the national flag. We have been taken to the terminal. Those — Arun Jaitley and Ananth (Kumar) — are trying to reason with the officials. You can’t do this under Section 144?”. Adding a bit of drama to her tweets, Ms Swaraj said the security personnel “told us — you are under arrest”. Her tweet continued: “Arrested — cars — separate — don’t know where to?” It went on: “They have got our baggage. Its loaded in three cars. What next? Don’t know.”