BJP protests against withdrawal of troops

BJP activists led by State President, Ashok Khajuria today took out a rally against the withdrawal of 30,000 troops from J&K State.

The rally started from party headquarters, which after passing through main bazars of the city, culminated at City Chowk, where a protest demonstration was held against withdrawal of 30,000 troops from the state.

Earlier, they were stopped to proceed towards City Chowk by a heavy contingent of police which had been deployed outside the party office and there was a scuffle between the activists and the policemen. Ashok Khajuria, while addressing the protestors at City chowk, said Defence Minister A.K. Antony’s announcement that the Centre has withdrawn nearly 30,000 troops from Jammu and Kashmir is yet another step towards accepting the wishes and whims of the separatists. He said the decision to withdraw two divisions of army from the state has exposed the pro-separatist approach of the present Congress-led UPA, which has been thinking in terms of granting concessions to the separatists under Quiet Diplomacy formula for their appeasement.

He also criticized the Union Home Minister, P. Chidambram, who had informed the Parliament that there was improvement in the over all security situation in the state. He said, both, the Defence Minister and the Union Home Minister, have no knowledge of the ground realities. Their claims of so-called improvement in the security situation are misleading and contrary to what the Chief of Army Staff have been repeatedly saying. It is either lack of knowing the ground situation in the state or the UPA is deliberately adopting lax approach to appease a handful of separatists and the parties like NC and PDP, which too have been singing the separatist tune. He sharply criticized Dr. Farooq Abdullah’s assertion that the reduction in the troops level deployed in the state would definitely ease the tensions here and termed it as most unfortunate and opportunistic. Leader of BJP Legislators Party Prof. Chaman Lal Gupta, on this occasion, asked the Congress-led UPA as to why the internally displaced Kashmiri Hindus have not been able to go back to valley if the situation is normal and a common citizen can live there without the presence of army and para-military forces. It is almost a matter of routine that the army has been busting the militant hide outs and recovering huge hauls of arms and ammunition from different areas of the state. He questioned the Union government as to why the separatists and the leaders of PDP and NC have been still provided with heavy security when they claim that the situation has improved and security level needs to be lessened.

The protest was organized by Jammu District BJP under Distt. President Rajesh Gupta. Shamsher Singh Manhas, Bali Bhagat, Ch. Sukhnandan, Sat Sharma, Ramesh Arora, Yudhvir Sethi, Parmodh Kapahi, Shiv Kumar Gupta, Bansi Lal Bharti, Pawan Khajuria, N.D.Rajwal, Usha Choudhary, Rajesh Gupta, Col. Uttam Singh, Jaideep Sharma, Baldev Singh, Kuldeep Magotra, Rajinder Sharma, Munish Khajuria, S. Amreek Singh, Ashwani Sharma, Surinder Sharma, Chaman Lal Kanathia, Vinay Gupta, Arun Khosla, Ramesh Sharma, Omi Khajuria, Dinesh Gupta, Gulshan Mahajan, Praduman Singh, Munish Sharma, Sajneev Gupta, Sanjay Baru, Pardeep Sharma, Manta Singh, Priya Sethi, Raj Rani Jamwal, Sakina Bano, Rajni Sethi, Sushma Manhas, Sureshta Jamwal, Sheela Handoo, Darshan Devi, Karan Singh, Bawa Sharma, Shub Chander Gupta, Indu Bhushan, Davinder Khajuria, Sat Pal Choudhary, Sunil Dogra, Surinder Pargal, Surinder Bhagat and Kulbhushan Vohra were prominent among those who took part in the protest demonstration.