Lok Sabha discusses BJP's adjournment motion on Doda killings

New Delhi, May 15 (UNI) Initiating discussion on the Adjournment Motion on recent killings in Doda and Udhamnagar districts of Jammu and Kashmir in the Lok Sabha, Leader of the Opposition L K Advani, accused the government of its failure to control the religious cleansing operation, launched by the militants in the state.

The debate began during the 'Zero Hour' with the BJP-sponsored motion 'Regarding the failure of the Central Government to make adequate security arrangements to protect the lives of Indian citizens in border areas as evident by the killing of 32 people in Doda and Udhamnagar districts in Jammu and Kashmir and killings of two persons in grenade attack at a political dharna in Udhamnagar district'.

Mr Advani said he had visited the site of the massacre in Doda and Udhamnagar yesterday and was convinced that the violence was orchestrated to terrorise the minority community people to leave the state. ''It was on the same lines as was witnessed in 1989 when as many as three lakh Kashmiri pandits were made to leave the valley,'' he said, adding that there seemed a bigger 'sinister design behind the Doda and Udhamnagar violence'.

He noted that while none of the militant groups had owned the responsibility for the killings in Doda and Udhamnagar, there were four groups competing with each other for the April 14 incident in Srinagar in which five persons were killed and also the seven bomb blasts that rocked the Srinagar last month, he said.

Mr Advani also accused the government of being soft on 'cross-border terrorism' and succumbing to Pakistan's pressure for demilitarising' the violence-ridden state. ''As many as 30,000 troops had already been pulled out and such steps of the government have emboldened the militants to step up the violence and killings of innocents to trigger off migration of minority people from the state.'' The Leader of Opposition charged the government with ''soft-pedalling'' and deviating from the NDA government's initiated process of normalising relations with Pakistan which was aimed at pursuing a dialogue with the neighbouring country more vigorously but without compromising on the issue of cross-border terrorism.

''It was an ominous development that the PDP, parner in the ruling coalition in J&K government, had now been demanding pulling of troops as well as para military forces from the 'disturbed' areas,'' Mr Advani said.

Countering Mr Advani's charges, Parliamentary Affairs Minister P R Dasmunsi said the Leader of the Opposition was delibrately using terms like 'ethnic cleansing' and a giving religious connotation to the Doda violence to 'divide the J&K society on communal lines and take political advantage in other parts of the country.

He sought to remind Mr Advani that during six year rule of the NDA, scores of such killings did take place in Doda, Udhamnagar and other parts of the state but his party never attempted to give a communmal colour to the violence.

''Moving of the Adjournment Motion on the Doda killings made it amply clear that the BJP wanted to make political capital out of such gory incidents,'' he added.

Mr Dasmunsi cited example of state Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad contested only in April from a constituency in Jammu region with a sizeable Hindu population and got more than 60,000 votes while BJP candidate managed only about 4000 votes. ''This showed that secular fabric of the state society -- which the BJP wants to tear apart -- is intact,'' he said.

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