india

Updated: Aug 13, 2019 08:55 IST

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday took on Congress leader P Chidambaram for his comment on Jammu and Kashmir, and said that the Congress leader was “trying to give the issue a communal colour” and his comment was “very irresponsible and provocative”.

Chidambaram had said that the Union government revoked article 370 in J&K, stripping it of its special status since it is a Muslim-dominated state. He said that had it been a Hindu state, J&K would have been untouched. He was speaking at an event in Chennai on Sunday.

Union law and Information Technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the former home minister was making a very irresponsible statement.

“The decision taken by the government is in the interest of the people of J&K. Is it not true that over 42,000 people, mostly Muslims, had died in the Valley during decades of violence,” Prasad said.

Defending the government’s Kashmir move, Union minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that the government has rectified a very big mistake made decades ago by the Congress.

“What Chidambaram has said is an attempt to give communal colour to the issue even though the decision is in national interest,” he said.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan said the Congress was giving the issue a communal angle.

“It is the Congress’s narrow mindedness that it is looking at the issue through a Hindu-Muslim prism,” said the for- mer Madhya Pradesh chief minister.

Addressing a press conference in Indore, Union information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar accused the Congress of doing injustice with minorities and other communities in Jammu and Kashmir during its long stay in power.

He said, “ Such arguments have no meaning now. The Congress should tell us why minorities in Jammu and Kashmir were not given the rights to run educational institutions and why justice was not done to the sanitary workers during its 70- year rule?”