Azad-led J&K govt was most discriminatory towards Jammu: BJP

BJP today hit out at former Chief Minister and Congress candidate from Udhampur Lok Sabha seat Ghulam Nabi Azad and said the government led by him was most discriminatory towards the people of Jammu region.
"The Azad-led government was most discriminatory towards the Jammu region on all fronts... It ignored the biggest political demands for creation of more districts and failed to carry out delimitation in the state," BJP's Jammu and Kashmir unit chief Jugal Kishore Sharma told reporters here today.
Sharma, who is the party's candidate from the Jammu Lok Sabha constituency, released a 'charge-sheet' against the successive Congress-NC governments in Jammu and Kashmir.

"The Azad-led coalition government in 2007 tore into pieces the 1983 Wazir Commission report which had recommended three new districts for Jammu and one for Kashmir. Instead it created four new districts in Kashmir in 2007 though there was no demand for more districts in the Valley," he said.
Sharma also alleged that the Congress went back on its commitments made in 2002 and 2008 that it, if came to power, would constitute a delimitation commission to provide due representation to the Jammu province in the Assembly.
The BJP leader also alleged the Azad government in 2007 had rejected a private member's bill in the Assembly seeking revoke of provisions concerning the state flag.

"It rejected the rational and national suggestion that J&K, like the rest of the country, must have one flag - the national tri-colour," he said.

He said Azad had also adopted a private member's bill in the same year that provided for one year rigorous imprisonment for those who would show no respect to the state flag, which is virtually the flag of National Conference.
Lambasting the previous Congress-led government for its failure to fulfil demands of refugees, Sharma said the Azad government had rejected a private member's bill that sought citizenship rights for the refugees from West Pakistan.
Taking a dig at Azad over secularism, he said, "It was the Azad government which rejected a private member's bill that sought incorporation of the words 'secularism' and 'socialism' in the preamble of the J&K Constitution, thus leaving none in any doubt that the Congress believed, and continues to believe, in fake secularism and that it is a rabidly a communal outfit.