BJP succumbs in Assembly on ex-gratia to stone-pelters: NPP

Excelsior Correspondent

JAMMU, Jan 17: Despite the BJP Working Committee’s resolution adopted by the party opposing any compensation to the stone pelters and their families, the State Government trashed the Saffron resolution and reiterated its decision of providing ex-gratia and jobs to the NOKs of  Kashmir unrest victims on the floor of the House.
In a press statement issued here today, NPP chairman and former minister Harsh Dev Singh regretted the  `criminal silence’ in the Assembly on the part of BJP members over this move. Lampooning the State Government and the BJP in particular for becoming a party in the process of glorifying the subversive anti-nationals,  Harsh Dev said that the recent statement of the CM to provide compensation to the victims of the 2008 Amarnath ji land row agitation was a clever ploy to ensure unhindered release of compensation in favour of thousands of stone pelters including the injured stone pelters.
Harsh Dev said that there could be no comparison between the martyrs of Jammu agitation with the subversives killed and injured during the Kashmir unrest as the former took part in nationalist movement and the latter in anti- national movement. He maintained that the people who were killed during the historic Amarnath ji agitation were the Nationalists who carried  Tricolour in their hands while raising slogans of ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ and only their NOKs actually deserved the ex-gratia and jobs with honour. And contrarily, the people who were killed in Kashmir fiasco supported Burhan Wani’s ideology, attacked Army camps, pelted stones on the security forces, snatched weapons from the defense personnel, torched schools and public property, unfurled Pak/ ISIS flags and shouted anti -India slogans besides waging war against the State and hence, deserved to be booked under the law.
Castigating BJP for its policy of `skullduggery’,  Harsh Dev regretted that the Saffron leaders once again succumbed in the Assembly over the ex-gratia and jobs to the kin of anti- nationals and remained shamelessly barefaced when their resolution was tossed to the wind before the laughing opposition and the stunned media.