As it became clear that the Jammu and Kashmir government is all set to prevent the BJP youth wings controversial yatra from entering the state,the party on Sunday accused the UPA and the Omar Abdullah governments of having psychologically surrendered to the separatists. The government has arrested the members of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha. They have sealed all border points in Jammu and Kashmir to prevent their entry. This is unacceptable and undemocratic, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley told reporters here. Even within the state,movements have been stopped. Trains carrying the BJP youth workers from all over the country are being cancelled and diverted forcibly and BJP youth reaching Jammu and Kashmir are being diverted forcibly to other parts of the states. By doing so they have surrendered to the separatists,he said and asserted that party activists had already travelled through 11 states and would hoist the Indian flag in Jammu and Kashmir. Senior BJP leader L K Advani also justified the youth wings plan to hoist the tricolour at Srinagars Lal Chowk. If the rationale for (issuing) prohibitory orders was apprehension of breach of peace,curbs should be targeted towards those who have declared that they will not let the tricolour be put up at Lal Chowk, he wrote in his blog. Taking issue with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,he said,I wish the PM realises that these young men led by Anurag Thakur are not trying to score a political point. They are challenging the separatists. And the state is surrendering to them. In a veiled reference to the likes of Arundhati Roy,Jaitley said while the government failed to act against those advocating separatism citing the right of free speech,the Prime Minister was talking about refraining from promoting divisive agendas. It is a matter of national regret that the Prime Minister should regard the hoisting of national flag as something which could be considered divisive or provocative. He said the sealing of borders of a state to prevent a peaceful political expression was undemocratic and unacceptable and argued that the massive repression undertaken by both the Central and the state governments would prove to be counter-productive. Meanwhile,senior party leader Murli Manohar Joshi who had led a similar yatra to Kashmir around two decades ago sprang a surprise by addressing the yatra in Amritsar. Joshi and the BJP leadership had been engaged in a cold war ever since he fast-tracked the Public Accounts Committees perusal of the CAG report on 2G spectrum allocation. He has also remained non-committal about the Prime Minister offer to appear before the PAC.
