Jammu, July 4 : In an attempt to diffuse the tension over the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) land issue, J-K Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has sought the cooperation of various political parties in normalising the situation and maintaining communal harmony in Jammu division, even as he called a meeting of his party ministers, legislators and corporators asking them to fan out to different parts of the province to undo the propaganda unleashed by political troublemakers to divide people along the lines of religion and region.
During separate phone calls on Friday, Azad spoke with, among others, the presidents of Bharatiya Janata Party, National Conference, Samajwadi Party,Bahujan Samaj Party and Shiv Sena, as well as the mayor of the Jammu Municipal Corporation and expressed his desire for a collective effort by all political parties and to maintain law and order and communal harmony in Jammu province. He urged the leaders to activate their party cadres to achieve this goal and to carry out a door-to-door campaign to dispel misgivings created by politically motivated instigators.
Earlier, the Chief Minister called a meeting of ministers, legislators, corporators and other workers of the Congress party here and asked them to reach out to people in different parts of the province and dispel their misgivings over the SASB land controversy. He said that people were being misled over the issue, owing to disinformation campaigns launched by factions with an eye on the coming Assembly elections, and stressed that raising public awareness would help undo some of the harm already done. He also pointed out that the state had suffered enough economic hardship due to the disruption of harmony, and that this should not be allowed to happen again.
Azad said that people need to be informed about the fact that the withdrawal of the Government order followed the communication received from the SASB informing it that the Board would not pursue its request for diversion of the forest land if the Government was ready to provide all facilities and security to pilgrims during the entire Yatra period. He said that the Government had accepted this responsibility and was already providing logistic support to the yatra in the shape of healthcare, security, etc.
