“Deliberately provocative, blatantly false statements”: Jairam Ramesh hits back at Amit Shah over ‘Nehruvian blunder’ claim

New Delhi [India], December 7 (ANI): Hitting back at Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who blamed the state of affairs in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir on the “two PoK blunders” by Jawaharlal Nehru, during a discussion on two draft legislations for the Union Territory in the Lok Sabha, the Congress on Wednesday accused him of making “deliberately provocative and blatantly false” statements against the country’s first prime minister.

Addressing a press conference in the national capital on Wednesday, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh tore into Shah, claiming that his statement in the Lower House was a ploy to take public attention away from the issues and narratives that his party and its partners in the INDIA bloc have put forward.

“Today, in the Lok Sabha, the Home Minister made deliberately provocative and blatantly false statements on Nehru’s role in Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 and 1948. Dr. Farooq Abdullah immediately called out the Distorian masquerading as a pseudo-historian. These are tactics to derail the Congress and INDIA’s narratives, and I for one will not fall into the Shah trap,” Ramesh said.

“His office should get him to read Chandrasekhar Dasgupta’s masterly book, ‘War and Diplomacy in Kashmir’ in which many such myths have been exposed and busted,” the Congress leader added.

Coming out in defence of the country’s first PM after Shah’s statements in the Lower House, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah said there was no other way than to take the Kashmir issue to the United Nations (UN).

The Union Home Minister, earlier, claimed that the announcement of a ceasefire and taking the Kashmir issue to a global forum were “two major blunders” committed by Nehru.

Speaking to the reporters here, the National Conference (NC) president said Lord Mountbatten and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had also suggested that the issue be taken to the UN for arbitration.

“There was no other way than this. Even Lord Mountbatten and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel suggested that this (Kashmir issue) should be taken to the United Nations,” Abdullah claimed.

He claimed further that Pakistan would also have taken control of Poonch and Rajouri had the Indian troops not been diverted there. “At that time, the army was diverted to save Poonch and Rajouri. Had that not been done, these regions would also have fallen to Pakistan,” the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister added.

In a fiery session at the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, Shah claimed that if Jawaharlal Nehru had taken the right steps, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) would still be an integral part of India today.

He labelled Nehru’s decisions about Kashmir during his tenure as PM, especially the announcement of a ceasefire and taking the issue to the UN as ‘historic blunders’ that inflicted significant suffering on the people in the erstwhile state.

“I support and endorse the word that was used here–Nehruvian blunder. Because of the blunders committed during the time of Nehru, the people of Kashmir had to suffer for decades. As a responsible leader and minister, I will say that the two big blunders that happened during the tenure of Jawaharlal Nehru condemned the people of Jammu and Kashmir to untold sufferings and hardships for years,” Shah said.