In an unsparing attack on the Congress over its alleged handling of the Jammu and Kashmir issue and not settling it decisively during its decades in power at the Centre, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said the grand old party held on to Article 370 and ‘cradled’ it like a baby on a mother’s lap till the Centre, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, revoked it on August 5, 2019.
Addressing an election rally at Akola in Maharashtra, Shah also came down heavily on Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge for questioning PM Modi’s invocation of the scrapping of Article 370 from the erstwhile state during a rally in Rajasthan.
“Kharge-ji questioned what the people of Maharashtra and Rajasthan have to do with Kashmir. Kharge Saheb, perhaps, does not know that every youth of Akola cares as much about Jammu and Kashmir as the people in the Union Territory themselves, and are even prepared to lay down their lives for it. It was Modi-ji, who paved the way for making Kashmir an integral part of the country after making Article 370 history. The Congress, as we all know, kept cradling and safeguarding Article 370 for the last 70 years and it wasn’t until you elected Modi-ji as PM for the second time, that it was consigned to history,” Shah said, invoking the landmark scrapping of the Article, as part of which certain constitutional safeguards and privileges were vested in the erstwhile state.