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Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on Friday accused Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah of making attempts to take the border state away from India.
"We do not consider Farooq Abdullah a nationalist," RSS Prachar Pramukh Srikant Joshi said at a media conference in Hyderabad.
"Today, Farooq Abdullah will not say he will join Pakistan because he may have to face the fate of Benazir Bhutto. But he can bargain with the Centre by holding out threats of joining with Pakistan," he remarked.
He alleged that in the name of seeking autonomy for the strife-torn state, Farooq Abdullah wanted to distance away from India.
"He wants to turn the clock back by demanding pre-1953 status for the border state," he said and pointed out that trifurcation of J&K as demanded by the RSS would expose forces such as National Conference, which wanted the state to secede from India.
Demanding imposition of President's rule in the state, he said that otherwise the conduct of the assembly election under the National Conference government would not be free and fair.
"The forthcoming election to the state assembly would be a fight mainly between the forces, which want to remain with India and those which seek to take Kashmir away from India," he claimed.
Joshi said that the experiment of allowing the NC to hold the reins in J&K has not yielded good results so far.
"The NC, which had its origin in the Muslim Conference, siphoned off Rs 170 billion allocated by the Centre to the state for development and for fighting militancy," Joshi alleged.
"Barring NC, all the political parties in the border state had welcomed RSS resolution adopted at its recent national executive calling for trifurcation of the state into Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir Valley," he claimed.
He said parties which supported the trifurcation were coming together to form a front.
Asked about the BJP's rejection of its demand, he said the state unit of the party was still considering it. "Only a section of the party is against this demand but they have to come with those supporting the demand to fight the election. Otherwise, the results will be bad for the party," he said and pointed out that even Congress had not rejected the demand.
He rejected BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu's view that demand for trifurcation of J&K was not in national interest.
"National interest is people's interest. People of Jammu and Ladakh have been demanding this for a long time because they are suffering discrimination for 50 years," he said.
Rejecting the contention that trifurcation would help Pakistan, he said the division of the state would be on regional lines and not on religious lines. The trifurcation would cause a loss to Pakistan because India would be able to easily tackle terrorism.
"Pakistan will not be able to carry on its activities in Jammu and Ladakh because they will have administrations, which will not tolerate terrorist activities. They will be homogenous, cooperative and integrate easily with India," he said.
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