Doda killings rock Parliament

NEW DELHI: The Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the fourth time till 3 pm on Monday amid pandemonium with the Opposition demanding Home Minister Shivraj Patil's presence in the House for a debate on the Doda and Udhampur killings.

 

As soon as the House reassembled at about 2.30 pm, Opposition members raised slogans iterating their demand that Patil should come to the Upper House for the debate on the killing of 35 innocent civilians of a minority community in Jammu and Kashmir recently.

 

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushma Swaraj said the government should not adopt an adamant attitude on the issue. The matter is being discussed in the Lok Sabha. The home minister should come to the House so that the debate on the issue could be initiated and then could go back after sitting here for 10 to 15 minutes, she said.

 

''This way the House is being insulted. The minister should have himself come to the House for the debate as the Upper House represents the states. The minister must be asked to come to the House,'' Swaraj said.
  
She was supported by other BJP members who made vociferous demand for the debate on the issue to start.

 

However, the treasury benches opposed the BJP leader's demand.

 

''Now, she (Swaraj) is giving direction to the government as to what the minister should do,'' a Congress member said.
  
Amid this bedlam, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman K Rahman Khan announced that the House has been adjourned till 3 pm.

 

Initiating a discussion on the adjournment motion on the killings in the Lok Sabha, Leader of the Opposition L K Advani accused the government of failure to control the religious cleansing operation, launched by militants in the state.

 

The debate began during Zero Hour with the BJP-sponsored motion 'regarding the failure of the Central Government to make adequate security arrangements to protect the lives of Indian citizens in border areas as evident by the killing of 32 people in Doda and Udhamnagar districts in Jammu and Kashmir and killings of two persons in grenade attack at a political dharna in Udhamnagar district'.

 

Advani said he had visited the site of the massacre in Doda and Udhamnagar on Sunday and was convinced that the violence was orchestrated to terrorise the minority community people to leave the state. ''It was on the same lines as was witnessed in 1989 when as many as three lakh Kashmiri Pandits were made to leave the valley,'' he said, adding that there seemed a bigger 'sinister design behind the Doda and Udhamnagar violence'. 

 

He noted that while none of the militant groups had owned up responsibility for the killings in Doda and Udhamnagar, there were four groups competing with each other for the April 14 incident in Srinagar in which five persons were killed and also the seven bomb blasts that rocked the Srinagar last month, he said.

 

Advani also accused the government of being soft on 'cross-border terrorism' and succumbing to Pakistan's pressure for demilitarising' the violence-ridden state. ''As many as 30,000 troops had already been pulled out and such steps of the government have emboldened the militants to step up the violence and killings of innocents to trigger off migration of minority people from the state.''

 

The Leader of Opposition charged the government with'soft-peddling' and deviating from the National Democratic Alliance government's initiated process of normalising relations with Pakistan which was aimed at pursuing a dialogue with the neighbouring country more vigorously but without compromising on the issue of cross-border terrorism.

 

''It was an ominous development that the People’s Democratic Party, partner in the ruling coalition in the Jammu & Kashmir government, had now been demanding pulling of troops as well as paramilitary forces from the 'disturbed' areas,'' Advani said.

 

Countering Mr Advani's charges, Parliamentary Affairs Minister PR Dasmunsi said the Leader of the Opposition was deliberately using terms like 'ethnic cleansing' and a giving religious connotations to the Doda violence to 'divide the J&K society on communal lines and take political advantage in other parts of the country.
  
He sought to remind Advani that during the six-year rule of the NDA, scores of such killings did take place in Doda, Udhamnagar and other parts of the state but his party never attempted to give a communal colour to the violence.
  
''Moving of the adjournment motion on the Doda killings made it amply clear that the BJP wanted to make political capital out of such gory incidents,'' he added.

 

Dasmunsi cited example of state Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad contested only in April from a constituency in Jammu region with a sizeable Hindu population and got more than 60,000 votes, while the BJP candidate managed only 4,000 votes. ''This showed that secular fabric of the state society -- which the BJP wants to tear apart -- is intact,'' he said.