New Delhi: Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday squarely blamed the Congress party for India's partition and Jawaharlal Nehru for his historical blunder, which resulted in ceding of one-third of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan. The remarks were made amid strong protests from the Congress benches. Shah was replying in the Lok Sabha to a 3-hour-long debate on a Bill which seeks to extend the President's rule in Jammu and Kashmir for another six months till January 3 next year. The Opposition members had questioned the government for not holding Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir while holding parliamentary elections there and delaying them further with another bout of the President's rule.
Shah asserted that the government is prepared for elections whenever the Election Commission decides and these will be free and fair unlike the rigged polls in 1957, 1962 and 1967, because of which the people lost trust in the democratic process. ‘‘We have always believed that a nation should not be divided on the basis of religion. We are not responsible for the partition. We didn't do it. Who approved of it? Jawaharlal Nehru. It was a Congress mistake. One-third of J&K is not with us because then PM Jawaharlal Nehru ordered ceasefire. We didn't. Nehru did and that too without taking into confidence then deputy prime minister and home minister Sardar Patel," Shah said amid a ruckus on the Congress benches.
He went on to assert that there would have been no terrorism if there was no Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK). He went on to recount how Sardar Patel brought over 600 small princely states, including Hyderabad and Junagarh, into mainstream while Nehru negotiated the merger of only Jammu and Kashmir with Maharaja Hari Singh. That left India with the political baggage of special status given to the state under Article 370 of the Constitution. He said the BJP remains firm that Article 370 is temporary provision and it should be abrogated.
Blaming the Congress for continuous alienation of the Kashmiris since Nehru days, the Home Minister said the Modi government is taking steps one after another to plug this alienation. He narrated how Nehru installed Sheikh Abdullah as the "PM" of Jammu and Kashmir and did not even order a probe into the death of then opposition leader Syama Prasad Mukerjee in jail. (Mukerjee was arrested on the border of the state on June 23, 1953, when he went there to oppose the move for a separate constitution for the state. He said it was also part of history how Nehru put Sheikh Abdullah in jail on August 8 the same year.
