Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the rise in voting percentage from 14% in the past to 37% on Tuesday in the Kashmir Valley seat of Srinagar, which went to the polls in the fourth phase of the ongoing Lok Sabha election, was the “greatest testament to the rightness of the decision” to removing Article 370.
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Mr. Shah said this during an interview with The Hindu. Article 370 had provisions for special status being accorded to the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir, which was removed in August 2019 by Parliament. The 2024 Lok Sabha elections are the first set of elections on the basis of political parties since then in the Kashmir Valley.
Mr. Shah also explained the BJP’s decision to not field a candidate in the three Valley seats of Srinagar, Baramulla and Anantnag-Rajouri. “There was an apaprachar (propaganda) against us that the Centre was doing development work in the J&K Valley to enforce rajnaitik prabhutva (political sovereignity) of the BJP there. After much serious thought, we decided that we will first build up our organisation on the ground and then give a candidate to fight polls,” he said.
“The bigger point is that there is no greater testament to the rightness of the decision of the removal of Article 370 than the polling percentages going up from 14% in the past to 37% in the Valley in this phase of polling. And let me tell you, for the first time, more than 40% of displaced Kashmiri Pandits have cast their votes when in the past this figure was in single digits,” the Home Minister added.
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He also addressed the demands for restoring Statehood to Jammu and Kashmir after the revocation of Article 370 that led to the erstwhile State being reduced to the status of a Union Territory. “See, I speak with a sense of sanctity in Parliament, and while the J&K Bill was debated, I said, first we will have President’s Rule, then the Bill will be fully implemented, followed by panchayat polls, delimitation, reservations, Assembly polls, and Statehood. I said this on the floor of Parliament,” Mr. Shah said.