New Delhi, Aug. 3: The Centre has strongly exhorted the BJP leadership not to stoke the Amarnath agitation which has kept Jammu on the boil for five weeks now.

The appeal, sources told The Telegraph, came directly from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he met L.K. Advani on the eve of his departure for the Saarc summit at Colombo.

The Prime Minister is believed to have backgrounded his arguments in last fortnight’s serial blasts and repeated ceasefire violations across the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir. The violent Amarnath agitation, he told Advani, needed to be quickly contained because it was worsening the already grim security scenario.

“The meeting was necessitated by concerns over the deteriorating situation, but the Jammu agitation was a very important part of the discussions,” a source said. “The Prime Minister was emphatic that the BJP was not helping the larger cause of national security by fuelling trouble in Jammu.”

Advani, on his part, made the Prime Minister no promises. On the contrary, he is learnt to have responded by advocating the restoration of 40 acres of forest to the Amarnath shrine board near Baltal in northern Kashmir.

In what indicates the Centre’s heightened concern over Jammu, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi reached out to BJP president Rajnath Singh this evening and sought his co-operation in containing the violence. Sources close to Rajnath said he told Sonia that “Hindu sentiments” had been deeply hurt and that the government would have to take “urgent measures” to assuage them. The BJP chief also told her that his party could only contemplate a constructive response after the government took an initiative with “inflamed” Hindu sentiments in mind.

The home minister discussed the issue with the Prime Minister this evening as soon as Manmohan Singh returned from the Saarc summit in Colombo.

The controversial land transfer — rescinded in the face of violent protests in the Kashmir valley — has already torpedoed the Congress-PDP coalition in the state and led to the fall of the Ghulam Nabi Azad government.

Although the Jammu agitation is formally led by a new politico-religious conglomerate called the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti (SASS), the local, and national, BJP are wholesomely backing the protracted disruption. The BJP has, in fact, taken the Amarnath land restoration demand far and wide to states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh where Assembly polls are scheduled soon.

Jammu and Kashmir itself will go to the polls later in the year and fears are that the current agitation will leave the state more bitterly polarised between the Muslim-majority Valley and the Hindu-majority Jammu region than is normally the case.

The Centre’s worry is that Congress supporters from the Jammu region, too, are beginning to crack under local pressure and lending their voice to the demands of the SASS.

Making common cause with the SASS — and by implication, the BJP — Congress MLA and former minister Yogesh Sawhney said: “It is not as if we are not Congressmen but we have to represent the sentiments of the region, too. If the restoration of forest land to the board is what it will take to end this anarchic situation, it should be done.”

The agitationists are also demanding the removal of governor N.N. Vohra, widely perceived in Jammu as the man behind the cancellation of the land transfer.