Will Mehbooba Mufti chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai, BJP ally Shiv Sena asks

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, March 28, 2016: BJP’s ally Shiv Sena today asked if Jammu and Kashmir chief minister designate Mehbooba Mufti will ever chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai, the contentious nationalist slogan being aggressively promoted by the BJP and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

 

"There is a debate going on over nationalism. The question being asked is: will Mehbooba Mufti say Bharat Mata Ki Jai?" senior Sena leader Sanjay Raut asked today.

Mufti is set to become the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir where her party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is in alliance with the BJP. The decision to continue the alliance was taken following a two-month long standoff between the two parties over core issues, including the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Last week, Mufti staked claim to power in Jammu and Kashmir after the BJP informed Governor NN Vohra that it was ready to support the PDP chief as the first woman chief minister of India’s only Muslim-majority state.

The date for the swearing-in ceremony, however, has not been decided as yet because the two coalition partners are still discussing ministerial portfolios - a last-minute hitch in forming the state government - which leaders of the two parties said would be resolved soon.

Sena, which is in alliance with the BJP at the Centre and in Maharashtra, also claimed Mufti is "sympathetic" towards Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. "These people are not ready to call him a terrorist," Raut said.

Jammu and Kashmir-based PDP has been ambivalent towards Guru, who was hanged in 2013 for the 2001 attack on Parliament. The party believes that hanging the Kashmiri militant was a miscarriage of justice, forcing the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party to ask what was the new government’s position on Guru.

"J&K deserves an elected government and we welcome celebration of democracy. But will (the) BJP tell what is the stance of PDP-BJP on Afzal Guru now," Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala asked in a tweet.

AAP leader Kumar Vishwas also asked the PDP chief to "voluntarily give a statement in the media that you hold Afzal Guru as a traitor and not as a martyr".