‘Will win their hearts’: Shah gets RS nod for J&K President\'s rule extension

New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the Rajya Sabha successfully brought the members to agree on a majority to the extension of the President's rule in Jammu and Kashmir which is due to end on July 2. He also was responsible for the successful clearing of the bill to extend special reservation benefits to people living near Jammu region’s three border districts along the International Border with Pakistan in the Upper House on Monday.

“We will win hearts of people in Kashmir… They will embrace us,” the home minister said, and also reiterated the government’s commitment to the policy of ‘Jamhooriyat, Insaniyat, Kashmiriyat’, quoting former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

He also mentioned that the that the Centre would continue with a hardline approach to deal with separatists and terrorists in the state. “They will be given an appropriate response in their language,” the Home Minister told the Rajya Sabha.

"Kashmiri Pandits - they were thrown out of the state. Were they not part of Kashmiriyat? When the Sufis were attacked, Sufi saints were murdered, those who used to talk of Hindu-Muslim unity, they were also thrown out of Kashmir. Wasn't the Sufi tradition a part of Kashmiriyat?" he went on to add.

The Lok Sabha had passed the two proposals last week but it was in the Rajya Sabha that it faced its most crucial test. The BJP-led ruling coalition is in a minority in the Rajya Sabha. The two were also Amit Shah’s first effort to get a law enacted after taking charge as home minister in PM Modi’s second term.

It had been evident from early evening that the proposals would not face too much of an opposition when leaders of several opposition parties including PDP, Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal – despite their sharp criticism of the BJP’s policy– made it clear that they would support the legislative proposals.

He also made it a point to mention that, “We do not want to mislead people on Nehru but lessons have to be learnt from historical blunders,” he said. “All Kashmir problems were due to Nehru declaring ceasefire when one-third of Kashmir was with Pakistan.”

"Why did Nehru government go to the UN despite Kashmir’s accession to India?" he also said.