J-K Govt’s move on yatra will become a poll issue: Advani

“It’s a serious issue. First the UPA Government brought the obnoxious affidavit on the Ram Sethu (questioning the existence of Lord Ram) and now this. The state Government has succumbed to vote bank politics,” BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L K Advani told The Indian Express.

Asked if the party would launch an agitation over the issue, he said, “It’s the people who would give their verdict on issues like these (in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections).”

The BJP has also slammed the Congress for letting the PDP have its way on the issue. The party says while the Congress and its Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad were initially sympathetic to yatris, “it has clearly succumbed to vote bank politics by rescinding the land transfer order”.

Advani, who recently visited Amarnath, said there could not be two sets of rules for the Vaishno Devi shrine (in the Jammu region) and the Amarnath shrine (in the Valley) only because the population compositions in the two regions are different.

While Amarnath is likely to strike a chord in the rest of the country, it could also be used by the separatists to accentuate the anti-India sentiment in the Valley. While Advani has spoken on “Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s sacrifice and Kashmir’s integration with the rest of the country”, it’s unlikely that the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate would take up the scrapping of Article 370 in the state.

Former Jammu and Kashmir Governor Lt Gen S K Sinha (retd), meanwhile, is said to be writing a tell-all book on the controversy.

The book, sources say, claims that the land tract was being diverted “only for two months a year for temporary accommodation for the yatra, with no scope whatsoever for any permanent construction”. “The charge that there was an attempt to change the demography of the region does...