JAMMU, AUG 22: Kavinder Gupta, former Deputy Chief Minister, and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader has slammed Congress leaders for their illogical remarks at the All Party Meeting convened by the former Chief Minister of erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir, Dr Farooq Abdullah at his residence the other day. The senior BJP leader said that the ganged-up political party leaders are unnecessarily brow-beating over the NPR voters issue due to their fears of defeat in the Assembly elections.
In a statement issued to media here today, Kavinder while questioning the Congress leaders asked, “What has the Congress Party and its so-called leaders done in about seventy years of rule for the people of Jammu and Kashmir?” He said that for about seven decades several communities remained deprived of their genuine rights including that of the most sacred democratic right of voting. He asserted that it was the BJP that by abrogating Art 370 has provided all the so far deprived rights to the deprived communities of J&K at par with the citizens across the rest of the nation.
While talking about the voting rights to outsiders, Kavinder said that after the abrogation of Art 370, Representation of People Act 1950 & 1951 are applicable in J&K, which allow ordinarily residing persons to get registered in electoral rolls of UT of J&K, provided he/she gets the name deleted from the electoral roll of his/her native constituency. He further said that even prior to the abrogation of Article 370 those ordinarily residing in UT were eligible to get registered in electoral rolls as they were categorized as Non-Permanent Resident (NPR) voters. The BJP leader informed that even during the last Parliamentary elections in J&K i.e. in 2019, there were 32,000 NPR voters. So these parties are creating ruckus just to make an issue out of non-issue and befool the people of J&K.
“It would not be wrong to state that these parties are just trying to thwart the restoration of the final democratic process of installing a representative government in J&K by conducting the Assembly elections,” he added.