Will do only what people want: BJP on Article 370

Reacting to apprehensions that BJP may abrogate Article 370, the party on Sunday said it would only do what the people of state want with regard to the provision of the Constitution that grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir.

‘On this issue (of Article 370), everyone, from our Prime Minister to our spokespersons, has clarified... I want to assure you that BJP will do only what the people (of the state) desire,’ the party’s in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir Avinash Rai Khanna told reporters here.

Khanna was responding to the worry expressed by National Conference president Farooq Abdullah that BJP has a ‘sinister’ plan to abrogate the state’s special status which will lead to ‘massive unrest’.

On Abdullah’s worries, the BJP leader said the leaders of the state were ‘trying to build an atmosphere’ of apprehensions over the issue.

Khanna also responded to Abdullah’s criticism of BJP’s attempts to rope in separatist leader Sajjad Lone who recently met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying ‘we should be happy if the minds of such people have changed’.

Earlier on Saturday, minister of State for External Affairs Gen VK Singh said the BJP stands for a relook at Article 370 that grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir but it never sought its abrogation or amendment.

‘The BJP’s poll plank was development and not Article 370,’ Singh told reporters upon his arrival here. ‘Article 370 got introduced somewhere or the other because the people kept asking about it. And I think all that the party said at that time was that we need to relook at all things in the country which unnecessarily create problems. That is all,’ he added.

The BJP ‘never said it (article 370) is to be removed. It never said it has to be amended. Nobody said that,’ he said.

Singh also sent out a message to Kashmiri separatist leaders to come forward for talks with the central government.