As reported by The Indian Express on Wednesday, Manmohan Singh had spoken to BJP president Rajnath Singh on Monday and sought his party’s help in finding a solution to the issue. The BJP later claimed that their main demand had been met with the government agreeing to start negotiations directly with the agitators. However, its other demand, asking for Vohra’s recall was rejected.

The meeting started with an opening remark by the Prime Minister who urged all parties to make efforts to ensure that the “extremely sensitive” situation was not aggravated any further.

The meeting was not completely colourless though. The BJP came under heavy attack from, mainly from the National Conference and the PDP, which accused the party of escalating the situation in Jammu. NC and PDP, the two main political parties in the state, also traded charges with each other.

A change of Governor, as demanded by the BJP and some Congress leaders as well, was ruled out by the government. As External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters later there was no question of recalling Governor N N Vohra who had been appointed just two weeks back.

The government also sought to make it clear that no transfer of land to the Shrine Board had taken place in the first place. As a result, the argument that the state government had taken back the land allotted to the Board did not arise.

“Neither physical possession of any land was given nor any transfer of land ever took place,” Mukherjee told reporters. “There must be some communication gap which led to this agitation”. The government has been arguing that all that the May 25 order of the state government had done was to change the land use pattern of the 40 hectares in question, to facilitate the construction of temporary facilities for Amarnath pilgrims.

... contd.