Srinagar, Apr 1: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah has said that abrogating Article 35-A was the party’s “commitment” to the people of India, a media report said on Monday.
The Quint quoted Shah saying that abrogating Article 35A is in the BJP manifesto and has been so since 1950.
“It has not happened till now as we do not have a majority in Rajya Sabha, but I believe it will happen by 2020. Removing Article 35A has been in our manifesto since 1950, it is our commitment to the people of the country,” Shah said at the News18 Agenda India Summit.
Article 35A empowers the government of Jammu and Kashmir to define a class of persons as constituting “permanent residents” of the state and also allows the government to confer special rights and privileges to the people with respect to employment and acquisition of immovable property in the state.
Amit Shah claimed that the BJP has been able to curb militant “funding and radicalisation”.
He said that the BJP government has banned organisations and plugged funding to curb militancy in Kashmir.
Shah said that the maximum number of militants have been killed during the BJP rule. “…and we will continue to do so. Earlier, there were talks of fake Hindu terror…now, the world talks about the terror that emanates from Pakistan,” The Quint quoted Shah as having said.
Talking about the controversy on the death toll, on the other side of the border, Shah said that he does not prefer to watch foreign media and only quoted the figures, about the death toll, of the national media.
“I quoted the Balakot figures from what I saw on our media channels…I did not watch or refer to foreign media reports,” Shah said.
The summit was attended by other leaders like Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman, CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat and Opposition leaders Kapil Sibal and Manish Tewari among others.
