Janata Dal (United) MP Sunil Kumar Pintu on Thursday said that the meetings convened by the Opposition’s Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc were limited to “chai-samosas” until the discussion on seat-sharing ahead of the Lok Sabha elections took place. The JD(U) leader’s remark came days after he sparked a row for commending Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) landslide victories in three of the five states where assembly elections were held. He raised the saffron party’s rallying call – ‘Modi hai toh mumkin hai’ (Modi makes it possible).
‘Mistakes have happened’
In line with Union minister Amit Shah who talked about “two blunders” made by former PM Jawaharlal Nehru that the Kashmir had to “suffer for years”, Pintu said “mistakes have happened in the past and the results are visible today.”
“We can see that PoK is being illegally occupied by some other country today. The person responsible for it is the Prime Minister of that time,” he told news agency ANI.
A row has sparked between the BJP and the Opposition parties after Shah’s speech in Lok Sabha on Wednesday. He was responding to the debate after the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill,2023 and the Jammu and Kashmir Reservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023, were introduced for passing.
“I support the word that was used here — Nehruvian blunder. Because of the blunder that was committed during the time of Nehru, Kashmir had to suffer. With responsibility, I want to say that the two blunders that happened during the tenure of Jawaharlal Nehru, due to his decisions, because of which Kashmir had to suffer for years. The first is to declare a ceasefire – when our army was winning, the ceasefire was imposed. If there had been a ceasefire after three days, PoK would have been a part of India today…The second is to take our internal issue to the UN,” the Union minister said.
‘Congress standing on the strength of JD(U) and RJD
After the grand old party’s defeat in state elections, except for Telangana, the JD(U) MP earlier alleged that the Congress’ is ignoring the very people on whose strength it stands in the states.
“Somehow, what Congress is doing is ignoring the very people on whose strength it stands in the states. Congress is standing on the strength of JDU and RJD in Bihar, SP in Uttar Pradesh and Hemant Soren in Jharkhand and Congress was moving ahead by ignoring all of them, the result of which was the result of three states that went against them,” he said.
Notably, JD(U) is one of the key stakeholders of the Opposition alliance. Party president and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar is believed to have spearheaded the coalition ahead of next year’s national election to take on the ruling BJP.
(With inputs from agencies)
