New Delhi, Sept. 1: The Janata Dal (United) today said Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah was justified in equating the case of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru with Rajiv Gandhi’s killers and charged ally BJP with “communal bias” in raising a hue and cry.
“Omar Abdullah’s comment was hundred per cent justified. We fully support it. He raised a very valid point when he asked what if the J&K Assembly passed a resolution like Tamil Nadu,” JD(U) MP Shivanand Tiwari told The Telegraph.
Omar triggered a political storm yesterday when he tweeted: “If the J&K Assembly passed a resolution similar to the Tamil Nadu one for Afzal Guru, would the reaction have been as muted? I think not.” The mercy petition of Afzal Guru, who hails from the Valley, is pending with the President.
The BJP termed Omar’s comment “shocking and unfortunate”. “Omar Abdullah’s comments are unfortunate. Had a Hurriyat leader made such remarks, it would have been understandable…Country’s politics is bigger than the state,” BJP spokesman Shahnawaz Hussain said.
JD(U)’s Tiwari scoffed at the BJP retort. “Why didn’t the BJP react similarly when the Tamil Nadu Assembly passed a unanimous resolution? If the BJP in principle feels death sentences upheld by the highest court in the country should be respected, then it should have reacted after the TN Assembly resolution. Making a distinction between Rajiv’s assassins and the Parliament attack shows communal bias,” Tiwari said.
Though the JD(U) is a part of the NDA coalition, it continuously strives to maintain a distance from the BJP’s alleged “communal agenda”. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has aggressively thwarted any attempt by the BJP’s poster-boy Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to campaign in the state.
The political commotion led Omar to backtrack and withdraw his statement from Twitter and re-tweet: “I should remember that channels will make a story out of just about anything and that will teach me to shut up.”
But Omar today again hit back at the BJP, saying he was “curious” to know the reaction of the party over the Punjab government’s appeal seeking clemency for death row convict Davinder Singh Bhullar. “I’m curious to see what Shahnawaz Hussain and the other BJP chaps are gonna say now. This is their Government in Punjab,” Omar wrote on Twitter.
Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal has sought the intervention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in securing clemency for terrorist Bhullar, convicted in the 1993 bomb blast at the Youth Congress headquarters in Delhi. The President rejected his mercy plea in May.
