Hitting out at Samajwadi Party, the state unit of Bharatiya Janata Party asked them to clarify its stand on the map showing Indian area as Indian occupied Kashmir by the senior Congress leader and former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Gulam Nabi Azad.
State BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak said here that everyone knows about the pro- Pakistani stand of the Congress since independence, but now what is the stand of the Samajwadi Party, the alliance partners of the Congress on the issue.
“SP leadership should come out and give their reaction on the issue. By keeping silent on the matter it will only prove that they are supporting the Congress on their anti-national act,” Pathak said in a statement here on Sunday.
He said that the release of the booklet by Congress leader Gulam Nabi Azad, who is former CM of Jammu and Kashmir is a planned strategy by the party to support the anti-national elements in the Kashmir valley.
“The move of Azad to skip all the questions on J&K and particularly over the stone pelting students of the Kashmir valley during a press conference vindicates the charges of BJP that the Congress and its leaders are hand in gloves with the anti-national forces,” he said.
Controversy broke out after 16-page booklet distributed by the Congress here during party’s UP in-charge Ghulam Nabi Azad’s visit to the state capital included a map that mentioned a part of Kashmir as “Indian-Occupied Kashmir”, leading a major embarrassment for the party which tried to corner the Narendra Modi government over its “failed” foreign policy.
The map was included in the booklet in reference to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Named ‘National Security Endangered.. Bravado, Rhetoric, Hyperbole Rules…!’, the booklet mentioned that the corridor is worth $54 billion and has been “built through POK/Balochistan connecting Gwadar Port in Arabian sea to China with base for Chinese submarines”.
The booklet was printed and released by the All India Congress Committee.
However, none of the senior leaders were available for comment from the Congress except for UP Congress vice-president Satyadeo Tripathi, who blamed the printers of the booklet for the controversy.
“Congress has always believed that Kashmir is an integral part of India. There may be some printing mistake in the map but the text clearly talks of POK. We are highlighting failures of BJP government in the past three years and they are again trying to divert attention by raising insignificant issues,” Tripathi said.
Meanwhile, no Samajwadi Party leader was ready to make any comment on the matter.