BJP march enters Jammu and Kashmir, top leaders arrested (Roundup)

LAKHANPUR - The much-hyped flag-hoisting march to Srinagar seemed to have ended in a fizzle with a few hundred Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers, including some top leaders, managing to enter Jammu and Kashmir, but were arrested as soon as they crossed over from Punjab by a determined state administration.

The first batch of BJP’s Ekta Yatra, comprising 500 workers, managed to enter Jammu and Kashmir Tuesday at the Lakhanpur barrier on the state’s border with Punjab, after removing the barricades put up by police.

The authorities have lodged four top BJP leaders - Arun Jaitely, Sushma Swaraj, Shanta Kumar and Ananth Kumar - in a hotel in the district headquarter town of Kathua. BJP’s youth wing president and MP Anurag Thakur, who was heading the march to Srinagar, was also among the arrested leaders.

Many other BJP activists, who had crossed into Jammu and Kashmir were taken in custody and lodged in Kathua town, 15 km from here.

Another batch of BJP activists, who were to be led into the state from Punjab’s nearby Madhopur resort by Amritsar MP Navjot Singh Sidhu, later changed their plan.

Changing its plan, the BJP activists and leaders in Madhopur have decided to protest on the Pathankot-Jammu-Srinagar national highway (NH-1A) and hoist the national flag there.

“We will decide the future course of action tomorrow after reviewing what the J and K government does with the senior leaders arrested today,” BJP’s Punjab state president Ashwini Sharma told IANS.

“We will hoist the tricolour here only,” a BJP leader told IANS.

Jaitely told reporters that they have “come here to underline the dignity of the Indian nation.” He blamed the central and the state governments for working against the national interest to “appease separatists in Kashmir”.

This is for the second time that BJP has brought a march into Jammu and Kashmir with an aim to hoist the national flag in the state. In 1992, the then BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi had led an ‘Ekta Yatra’ into the state and had hoisted the national flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar.

The BJP workers Tuesday showed the victory sign as they crossed Lakhanpur bridge across Ravi river from Punjab.

“What kind of a state and governance is this. We are here in Jammu and Kashmir, this is a slap on the government that showed its fascist tendencies by sending us back yesterday. We were ready to face the separatists by going to Lal Chowk. We were ready to die for this,” said Sushma Swaraj before she was arrested.

The authorities had imposed prohibitory orders, banning assembly of five or more people, in Kathua district that borders Punjab Monday night.

The marchers chanted slogans like “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” and “Lal Chowk Jayenge” (We’ll march to Lal Chowk in Srinagar).

Around 2,000 BJP youth wing workers and leaders had gathered in Madhopur, at the other end of the bridge in Punjab.

The controversial march to the state battling a separatist campaign since 1989 is planned to culminate at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk, a historic square witness to many political events of the troubled state, including first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s address in 1947.

The Jammu and Kashmir government has not given permission for the BJP’s march, Ekta Yatra or the national unity march, for it believes that it may reignite tension in the state where calm has prevailed after months of unrest and deadly street protests last summer.

Security forces in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab sealed the Pathankot-Jammu national highway, NH-1A-the only road link that Jammu and Kashmir has with the rest of the country. The strategic Jammu-Srinagar highway was also shut to traffic to scuttle attempts by BJP activists to sneak into the Kashmir Valley.

The Lakhanpur barrier-Madhopur bridge area, on the border between Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab, resembled a battle-zone Tuesday morning with hundreds of armed security personnel being deployed.

Armoured vehicles, water-cannon trucks, teargas equipment and riot-control vehicles and personnel were stationed to thwart any attempt by the BJP leaders and activists to enter Jammu and Kashmir. Wired fencing was put up all across the bridge to prevent anyone from crossing it. However, the security forces did not put up any resistance when the BJP marchers came.

Home Minister P. Chidambaram had earlier Tuesday asked the BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and others to respect the orders of the Jammu and Kashmir government and call off their planned flag-hoisting in Srinagar by giving up the “path of confrontation”.