New Delhi, Dec 08: Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh on Friday said that the Congress party should be grateful to Prime Minister Narendra Modi because he had completed Jawaharlal Nehru’s “unfinished task” by abrogating Article 370.
Nehru and the Congress party had accepted Article 370 of the constitution as “temporary” but allowed it to continue because, over the years, the Congress and its allies like the National Conference developed a vested interest in its continuance.
“Later, the continuance of terrorism and militancy also became a vested interest for these parties because it enabled them to get elected and form government with a mere 10% or less voting and thus continue their dynasty rule, generation after generation,” he said.
In an exclusive interview at the “Bharat Leadership Summit” here, Dr Jitendra Singh recalled that Article 370 was included in the Indian Constitution despite reservations from Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in the Constituent Assembly. To pacify Mukherjee, the exact words used by Jawaharlal Nehru were “Yeh (370) ghiste ghiste ghis jayegi”.
“If only the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had allowed his Home Minister Sardar Patel to handle Jammu & Kashmir in the same manner as Sardar Patel was handling the other princely States of India, the history of Indian subcontinent would have been different and PoJK would have been a part of India,” he said.
The union minister alleged that successive governments over the years have backed out of the historic 1994 unanimous Parliament resolution on Jammu and Kashmir.
Government’s consistent and principled position, as also enunciated in the Parliament resolution adopted unanimously by both Houses on 22 February 1994, is that the entire Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh have been, are and shall be an integral part of India, he said. In addition, Pakistan will be made to withdraw from PoJK, according to the resolution, Dr Singh said.
“No referendum or plebiscite was mandated in any other erstwhile princely states during the unification of India, but why an exception was made when Nehru spoke of the referendum in the case of J&K and created a political controversy for the years to come,” he asked.
One of the blunders, the minister said, was to declare a unilateral ceasefire precisely by PM Nehru when the Indian Army was about to retrieve the areas of J&K captured by Pakistan which are now part of PoJK.
“The unilateral ceasefire declaration by the then Prime Minister Nehru also led to the loss of parts of Jammu & Kashmir. Such decisions are still costing India its land and resources,” he said.
He said the votaries of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir were the biggest abusers of this Constitutional provision to sustain themselves in power and serve their political interests. “Jammu & Kashmir suffered a long nightmare of blunder, blackmail and deceit propagated by vested interests,” he said.
Dr Jitendra Singh, who is an elected MP from Udhampur constituency of J&K Union Territory, said redemption came in the form of Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he abrogated Article 370 in August 2019 and liberated the people of Jammu and Kashmir and integrated the UTs of Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh into the national mainstream.
PM Narendra Modi has created a milieu for entrepreneurship and a thriving industry, he said, adding, “We had everything, but we were possibly waiting for an enabling milieu to happen. And that enabling milieu happened after Prime Minister Modi came in.”
He added, “India has emerged as a leading Space power with the successes of Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya L1 missions. PM Modi enabled India’s Space scientists to vindicate the dream of their founding father Vikram Sarabhai by unlocking India’s Space sector and providing an enabling milieu in which India’s huge potential and talent could find an outlet and prove itself to the rest of the world.”
“After the opening up of the Space sector by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June 2020, the number of Space Startups sky-rocketed from merely 4 to 150 Startups,” he added.
