BJP wants to score political points from Ekta Yatra

Behind all the sloganeering and the exchange of good wishes, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is all set to take political mileage out of the Ekta Yatra which was started to hoist the national flag at the politically-sensitive Lal Chowk in Srinagar.

The central leadership of the BJP has decided not only to raise the issue of not being allowed to hoist the flag in Srinagar in the upcoming Parliament session but also to start a political debate in the country to attack both the state and central governments for not allowing them to carry the rally to Srinagar.

To strengthen the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has already started a door-to-door campaign against the Union government’s policies on solving the Kashmir issue. “The Ekta Yatra crossed 11 states but there was no objection from the state government but only one chief minister said that even holding the tricolour flag on the Republic Day was a crime. The people of this country can understand the political outcome of these statements the Union government and state government has psychologically surrendered before the separatists by stopping this rally,” said Arun Jaitley, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, who was detained at the Jammu airport along with another senior party leader Sushma Swaraj, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha. They were later stopped from entering the state.

“Although the Yatra has ended, it has started a political debate in the country on the government’s policy on Kashmir issue and we know that the country will be with us. The state government has said that there would violence in the Kashmir Valley because of this Yatra but the violence was done only by the state police and the state government. We were illegally detained for six hours and later abducted by them,” said Jaitley.