Jammu: Despite heavy rain, BJP and Congress workers came face-to-face at Shaheedi Chowk near the Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) headquarters on Wednesday, prompting massive police deployment and the erection of barricades to prevent any confrontation.
Police formed a security cordon and kept the rival groups apart with barbed wire as both parties raised slogans within proximity to each other.
The BJP protest was led by the Leader of Opposition in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly, Sunil Sharma, who, along with senior party leaders and workers, marched towards the JKPCC headquarters despite heavy downpour, raising slogans against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
The Congress workers led by JKPCC president Tariq Hameed Karra and working president Raman Bhalla came out of the party headquarters and staged a counter-protest, chanting slogans demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and against alleged hooliganism of the BJP.
Sharma accused Gandhi of abandoning parliamentary debate and attempting to incite unrest among the youth.
“We are marching to the JKPCC office to convey one clear message that India believes in democracy, not in political theatrics,” the BJP leader said.
He claimed that Gandhi walked away from debate and left Parliament – “the country’s highest democratic institution and the foremost forum where national policies are debated”.
“By doing so, he committed an act that appears to be part of a larger conspiracy. He (Gandhi) is attempting to instigate the youth, who are the foundations of the vision of a developed India by 2047, trying to create an atmosphere of anarchy.
“The Congress seems to believe that, just as movements were launched in countries like Bangladesh and Nepal in the name of so-called public uprisings to capture power, a similar strategy can succeed here. That is their misconception,” Sharma said.
Stating that the people of India, especially the youth, have faith in democracy, he said. “If Gandhi wants to come to power, there is a democratic process for that – he should seek people’s mandate through elections.
“After suffering electoral defeats in Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Assam and several other places, it appears they believe they can create unrest and build a political atmosphere through disorder.”
JKPCC president Karra defended the Congress protest as a democratic right, alleging that the BJP was trying to suppress dissent instead of allowing a discussion in Parliament on the students’ agitation.
Accusing the ruling party of using force against the protesters and targeting the Congress, Karra claimed that BJP workers had come to the party office to intimidate its members, asserting that the Congress was prepared to peacefully resist what he termed the BJP’s “hooliganism”.
“A protest is undoubtedly a part of democracy – there is no doubt about that. But our protest is against the BJP’s hooliganism. Our protest is also against the fact that the BJP does not want to discuss such a sensitive and contentious issue in Parliament.
“We are protesting because students have gathered at the Jantar Mantar in Delhi to voice their grievances, hardships and demands, yet, instead of engaging with them, the government chose to lathi-charge them,” Karra said.
He alleged that the police crackdown on student protesters in Delhi on Monday indicated that the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had realised that protests were spreading across the country.
“It is the BJP which is creating unrest and attacking people across the country. Today, BJP workers came to attack our party office. We were sitting peacefully inside, but when we learned that they had come to attack us, we could not simply remain seated – we had to come outside as well,” Karra said.
“What the BJP is doing is not protest but hooliganism. Using the government, the administration and the police, they have come here to attack us. But we are standing our ground, fully prepared to face any such attack,” he added.
The BJP and the Congress have been at loggerheads over the police crackdown on protesters led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), who gathered at the Jantar Mantar on Monday for a ‘Sansad Chalo’ march, demanding accountability over the NEET paper ‘leak’ and resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, among others, despite heavy security deployment.
The matter took a dramatic turn on Tuesday when opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, were forcibly removed by police after they staged a dharna outside Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence in Delhi, demanding his resignation.
