Senior BJP Leader Says People of Kashmir are 'Not Loyal to Country', Demands Statehood For Jammu

New Delhi: In a remark that has drawn sharp criticism from political parties in Jammu and Kashmir, former minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sham Lal Sharma has spoken in favour of the carving out Jammu as a separate state, also claiming that the people of Kashmir “are not loyal to the country.” Sharma said on Monday (January 19) that continuous unrest in the Kashmir valley has repeatedly disrupted what he described as the “naturally peaceful” environment of Jammu, reported Deccan Chronicle.

Sharma, who is an incumbent BJP MLA, batted for Jammu as a separate state and said that if Jammu is separated from Kashmir, the region would flourish economically, socially, and administratively. Claiming that Jammu possesses much larger share of natural and economic resources, Sharma said that almost 80% of the electricity generated in the Union territory is contributed by Jammu.

He further claimed that 80% of the deposits in the J&K Bank originate from Jammu. Sharma also claimed that maintained that Jammu has faced “decades of discrimination.”

While Sharma insisted that his statements reflect his personal views, the BJP leadership distanced itself from his remarks stressing that his statements do not represent the party’s official position, reported Deccan Chronicle.

Slamming Sharma for his comments, the ruling National Conference (NC) president and former chief minister Farooq Abdullah termed the idea of separating Jammu as “absurd” and said that insisted that Jammu and Kashmir are historically and culturally inseparable.

Chief minister Omar Abdullah accused the BJP of having “ruined” Ladakh after its bifurcation and warned that dividing Jammu would repeat the same mistakes. He further added that Sharma’s proposal risks further deepening communal divides.

Former chief minister People’s Democratic Party (PDP) president and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti criticised Sharma’s proposal as rooted in religious considerations tied to Jammu’s Hindu majority character.

She also warned that dividing the region along communal lines would undermine the secular foundations on which Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India in 1947 after rejecting Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s two nation theory.

Mufti said that such a move would retroactively validate the idea that Hindus and Muslims cannot coexist within a single political unit. The former chief minister accused the BJP, RSS, and Bajrang Dal of using Jammu and Kashmir as a “laboratory” for divisive experiments that could later be replicated elsewhere in the country, said the Deccan Chronicle report.

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