BJP President Amit Shah on Sunday, 31 March, said removing Article 35A is in the BJP manifesto and has been so since 1950. The comment was made at the News18 Agenda India Summit, where Shah was in conversation with News 18’s Managing Director Rahul Joshi.
The summit was attended by other leaders like Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman, CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat and Opposition leaders Kapil Sibal and Manish Tewari among others.
Speaking on Article 35A Amit Shah said:
“It has not happened till now as we do not have a majority in Rajya Sabha, but I believe it will happen by 2020. Removing Article 35A has been in our manifesto since 1950, it is our commitment to the people of the country.”
Article 35A empowers the government of Jammu and Kashmir to define a class of persons as constituting “permanent residents” of the state and also allows the government to confer special rights and privileges to the people with respect to employment and acquisition of immovable property in the state.
He also said there would be no necessity for surgical strikes against Pakistan if strong action was taken by previous governments. When asked about the death toll at Balakot where IAF conducted air strikes in retaliation to the Pulwama attack, Shah said, “I quoted the Balakot figures from what I saw on our media channels...I did not watch or refer to foreign media reports.”
Continuing on the issue of terrorism, Shah claimed the BJP has been able to curb terror funding and radicalisation.
“We have done a lot to curb terror in Kashmir...we have banned organisations and plugged terror funding...we have managed to curb radicalisation...it is under our government that we have neutralised the maximum number of terrorists...and we will continue to do so. Earlier, there were talks of fake Hindu terror...now, the world talks about the terror that emanates from Pakistan.”
He also spoke about BJP’s ‘Mai Bhi Chowkidar’ campaign. “‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’ is not a BJP campaign,” he said. “This is a campaign by the people of the country who are supporting the prime minister after he was insulted,” he added.
Amit Shah said the BJP government’s biggest achievement was that the whole world is looking at India as a global leader.
“We were the 11th largest economy in the world... today, we are the 6th largest. The requirement of cash in our economy has decreased... digital transactions have gone up. The amount of black money has gone down... there are people in England who are feeling uncomfortable because of the actions we took.”
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