Promising a terror-free region under the BJP regime, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday said that the National Conference-Congress alliance would impose Pakistan’s agenda if it comes to power.

Shah was addressing a series of poll rallies in the Jammu region, including Udhampur and Chenani, where elections will be held in the third phase on 1 October.

Advertisement

Launching a scathing attack on the NC-Congress alliance, Shah said, “Since independence, it is for the first time that an election is being held here without a separate flag or Article 370 in force. NC and ‘Rahul Baba’ claim that we will restore Article 370, but I want to tell them that neither they nor their three generations will be able to bring it back.”

The Narendra Modi-led government has fulfilled the dream of the party’s patriarch, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, by abrogating Article 370, he said.

Shah was referring to the Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir that are being conducted after 10 years and for the first after the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019.

The Union Home Minister said that terrorism has been buried and will not be allowed to stage a comeback.

He said the world is closely watching the J&K elections, where two vastly different ideologies are at play. On one hand, the NC, Congress, and PDP, which perpetuated terrorism, are vying for power, on the other hand, the BJP, committed to rooting out terrorism, offers a contrasting picture.

“Whoever spreads terror in Jammu and Kashmir will face the gallows. I want to ask you whether the Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru should have been hanged or not. The NC and Congress are now saying he should not have been hanged,” Shah said.

“They want to release stone pelters and terrorists. Omar Abdullah has given up these dreams because they cannot be fulfilled. It is the duty of courts, and we have enforced such laws that no one will dare to hurl a stone again,” he said.

He added, “Since 2014, we have been working tirelessly to empower the SCs, STs, Dalits, poor, and women, while the Congress and Abdullahs never cared for them.”

Shah said the Abdullahs and Nehrus are accountable for the killing of 40,000 people in J&K. He added that while innocent people were being killed in J&K, Farooq Abdullah was holidaying in London. It is the BJP, he asserted, that has eradicated terrorism from Jammu and Kashmir.

He said that the BJP will bring out a white paper on terrorism and place it on the table of the Assembly.

Referring to Rahul Gandhi’s statement about the Lt Governor and outsiders ruling J&K, the Union Home Minister said that ‘Rahul Baba’ should know that the longest period of President’s rule in J&K occurred during the tenures of his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, and father, Rajiv Gandhi.