Abhiram   

Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamana has blasted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for “running away from Kashmir exactly like the British rulers ran away from India when they could no longer take responsibility and govern”, barely two days after Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray complemented the BJP for pulling out of the alliance with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Saamana editorial published on 21 June pans the BJP’s Kashmir policy and says the BJP is shirking its responsibility by blaming it all on the PDP. “The BJP has decided to pull out of the government in Kashmir after creating an anarchy there,” the editorial says.

On 19 June, Thackeray, while addressing Sena cadres on the occasion of the party’s 52nd foundation day, applauded the BJP for finally pulling the plug in Kashmir though the Sena chief did question the BJP for staying in power with the PDP for threeand-a-half years. In the last four years, the editorials in Saamana have grown more and more critical of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi reflecting the uneasy BJP-Shiv Sena relationship.

The Shiv Sena is the oldest constituent of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) but Thackeray has said that the party would not contest the next elections in an alliance with the BJP. Earlier this month, BJP president Amit Shah called on Thackeray at the latter’s residence in Mumbai to explore reconciliation but no formal announcement has yet been made by either party after this meeting.

The Saamana editorial, which broadly represents the Shiv Sena view, says the decision to share power with the PDP was a “stupid call and misadventure” in the first place. “But in its imperial zeal to capture one state after another in the country and a sense of being unconquered, the power-hungry BJP formed the government in Kashmir with PDP,” the editorial says.

The country has had to pay a heavy price for the BJP’s Kashmir misadventure, the editorial says and tells the BJP that history will never forgive it for this blunder. Noting that the situation in J&K was never so bad as it is now, the Shiv Sena mouthpiece says that never before was so much blood shed in the besieged state nor had so many soldiers died before in the valley.

The editorial does not spare Modi either and blames him for “frequently being abroad” while his “babus confabulate on what is to be done in Kashmir”.

Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee cracked the whip on workers and leaders of her party from the erstwhile Maoist bastion of Jhargram and Purulia, at a town hall meeting on Thursday, saying that many of them had, in defiance of the central leadership, fielded candidates of their own in last month’s panchayat election.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gained significant ground in both Jhargram and Purulia and won more than a third of the seats in these two districts. Though it trailed the TMC, the BJP won 644 of the 1,944 gram panchayat seats in Purulia and 329 of the 806 seats in Jhargram. The results showed a section of the tribal population had swung towards the BJP.

“I shall spare no one,” Banerjee threatened. Leaders will have to take responsibility

Abhiram.g@livemint.com MUMBAI arkamoy.m@livemint.com KOLKATA

Courtesy: Mint: 22 Jun 2018