Senior BJP leader proposes separate Jammu state, says Kashmiris are ‘not loyal to country’
New Delhi: Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and MLA Sham Lal Sharma has triggered a political row after asserting that the people of Kashmir are “not loyal to the country” and arguing that Jammu should be carved out as a separate state.
Speaking on January 19, Sharma said repeated unrest in the Kashmir Valley had disrupted what he described as the “naturally peaceful” atmosphere of Jammu. According to him, the creation of a separate Jammu state would allow the region to progress economically, socially and administratively, reported Deccan Chronicle.
Sharma claimed that Jammu contributes the bulk of the Union territory’s resources and alleged that it has faced decades of discrimination. He said nearly 80 per cent of electricity generation and a similar share of deposits in the Jammu and Kashmir Bank originate from Jammu. The BJP leader maintained that his comments reflected his personal views.
Following the remarks, the BJP leadership distanced itself from Sharma’s statements, clarifying that his views do not represent the party’s official stand.
The comments drew strong reactions from regional parties in Jammu and Kashmir. National Conference president Farooq Abdullah dismissed the idea of separating Jammu as “absurd” and said the regions of 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 a similar move in Jammu would repeat those mistakes. He said the proposal risked deepening communal and regional divides.
People’s Democratic Party president and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti criticised Sharma’s remarks as being rooted in religious considerations linked to Jammu’s Hindu-majority character. She warned that dividing the region on communal lines would undermine the secular basis on which Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India in 1947, after rejecting Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s two-nation theory.
Mufti further alleged that such proposals would reinforce the notion that Hindus and Muslims cannot coexist within a single political unit and accused the BJP, RSS and Bajrang Dal of treating Jammu and Kashmir as a “laboratory” for divisive political experiments, the report said.
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US VP JD Vance says Lebanon not part of ceasefire, calls it ‘misunderstanding’
Budapest/Washington: US Vice President J D Vance has said that Lebanon was never included in the ceasefire understanding with Iran, describing the confusion as a “legitimate misunderstanding”.
Speaking to reporters before departing from Hungary, Vance said, “I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon and it just didn’t. We never made that promise.”
He stressed that the United States had not included Lebanon in the scope of the ceasefire at any stage.
His remarks come amid continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon, where more than 200 people were reported killed, even as ceasefire talks between Iran and the US move forward.
Vance said Israel had “offered … to check themselves a little bit in Lebanon because they want to make sure that our negotiation is successful”.
He warned that if Iran allows the situation in Lebanon to affect the negotiations, it could derail the talks.
“If Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart in a conflict where they were getting hammered over Lebanon, which has nothing to do with them and which the United States never once said was part of the ceasefire, that’s ultimately their choice,” he said.
