Home Minister P Chidambaram made a special request to the Bharatiya Janata Party central leadership and its legislature party in Jammu and Kashmir to attend the prime minister's meeting convened to discuss the situation in the state.
The BJP legislature party in Jammu and Kashmir had refused to be part of the all-party delegation from the state to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as it is led by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah. "Our legislators do not agree with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah's views on the situation in Kashmir and did not wish to be part of any delegation led by him to meet the prime minister," Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj said.
The BJP MLAs from the state had met the PM last week as part of a delegation led by BJP parliamentary party chief L K Advani. Home Minister P Chidambaram and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah took the initiative on government's behalf to convince BJP to attend Tuesday's meeting. Both of them met Swaraj in the Lok Sabha and told her that BJP's presence in the meeting was crucial. Swaraj told Farooq Abdullah to meet BJP parliamentary party chief L K Advani, who had led the BJP MLAs delegation to the PM, to discuss the issue.
"We decided that BJP can participate in the meeting not as part of the all-party delegation led by Omar Abdullah but as invitees of the prime minister," Swaraj said. Leaving nothing to chance, Chidambarama himself called BJP legislature party leader in Jammu and Kashmir Chaman Lal Gupta asking him to attend. Gupta gave his consent and will be accompanied by BJP state unit head Shamsher Singh in the meeting.
During the earlier meeting with the Prime Minister, the BJP delegation had told him that government appeared clueless about how to tackle the situation and expressed its dissent to giving a political package to Jammu and Kashmir as demanded by Omar Abdullah."The army's strength in the valley should not be reduced and no steps should be taken which would demoralise the security forces," a BJP leader said. The Peoples Democratic Party will boycott the meeting, sources said.
