Article 370 row: Advani hits back at Omar Abdullah

NEW DELHI: In his blog, titled "Restrain yourself, Omar Abdullah", BJP leader Advani said Abdullah had every right to disagree with BJP on matters relating to J&K, but that he "would advise him never to use offensive language and words like 'cheating' and 'deceiving' in that context".

Advani's blog was a response to a recent speech by the J&K CM, where he had said, "That there are some opportunistic leaders who are parroting 370 as they feel elections are near and want to befool the people." BJP has been pressing for the abolition of Article 370 and Advani's previous blog post last Sunday had made a renewed pitch for scrapping it.

Advani went on to say that even Congress - other than former PM Jawaharlal Nehru and a few other leaders - was opposed to according a special status to Jammu and Kashmir. He quoted liberally from a biography of India's first home minister Sardar Patel to argue that even the latter was against Article 370.

He said BJP had "not only been unequivocal, forthright and consistent from the time Jana Sangh was born in 1951 till today, but it is an issue for which the party's founder-president laid down his own life."

SP Mookerjee, who founded Jana Sangh, was arrested in J&K in 1952 when he tried to enter the state without a permit which was required then to go to there. He died allegedly under mysterious circumstances while in jail.