BJP rejects Kashmir interlocutors' report

Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Nirmala Sitaraman called the Jammu & Kashmir interlocutors' report being published on a website just 36 hours after the conclusion of the budget session of Parliament as UPA II's "backdoor exposure" of a sensitive report.

"We'd have appreciated if it were to be first made available in Parliament," she said addressing media on the first day of the BJP's national executive meet in Mumbai on Thursday.

This report is in complete denial of the hard realities in J&K, she said. "The report dilutes the issue of Pak-sponsored terrorism, sidesteps discriminatory regional imbalances, does not address the safety and security of Kashmiri Pandits and Sikhs who have fled the state, suggestion of POK as PAK (Pak-administered Kashmir) and substitution of the word 'temporary' with 'special' in relation to Article 370," Sitaraman said.

"The BJP completely rejects every aspect of this report and condemns some suggestions," she said categorically.

The interlocutors' report will not help in the integration of J&K into India, she said. The proposal to review all laws passed by the Indian Parliament after 1952 in relation to the state is a sinister ploy, she said.

She said that the BJP considers the provisions of Article 370 as a "psychological barrier" for the physical and psychological integration of J&K into India.

Noted journalist Dileep Padgaonkar and academicians MM Ansari and Radha Kumar are the three interlocutors who have made the report after prolonged discussions with the people of J&K.

When asked if this was a UPA ploy to divert the attention of away from the shocking petrol price hike, Sitaraman said she wouldn't even want to think if this was the case given the emotiveness and sensitivity attached to the subject.