Article 370, CAA were never political issues for BJP: Union Minister Narendra Tomar

Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Sunday asserted that Article 370 and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act were never political issues for the BJP, but were connected with the country’s unit and integrity.

Tomar also said Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee sacrificed his life for the unity and integrity of the nation.

“If today Kashmir is on India’s map, it was Mookerjee’s sacrifice,” he said, adding that Mookerjee was against one country, two legislations, two emblems and two constitutions.

“As BJP workers, we have been stressing that whether it is Article 370, 35-A, building of Ram temple, CAA, these were never issues of politics or votes for us nor are they today,” the agriculture minister said at the ‘Haryana Jan Samvad’ rally.

The rally was organised to mark the first anniversary of the Narendra Modi government’s second term and Tomar spoke from Delhi.

He said the BJP did whatever was possible to fulfill its commitment towards building the Ram temple.

On triple talaq, Tomar said “it was our Prime Minister’s dream that injustice which lakhs of Muslim women face should be done away with even if law has to be made for this and we did that”.

Tomar said our villages will have to be made ‘Atma Nirbhar’ for making the country self-reliant.

Tomar spelled out steps which the Narendra Modi government at the Centre and the Manohar Lal Khattar government in Haryana have taken for making farming profitable.      

 He said the Farming Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance, 2020, which allows barrier-free trade in agriculture produce outside the notified APMC mandis, will not impact local mandis in any way. “The only change we have made is allowing farmers to decide if he wants to sell inside mandi or outside,” the minister said.

He also said that purchase of crops at MSP will continue.

The minister said that during its first term, the Modi government took many bold decisions, which took the country forward and helped bring change in lives of the poor.

“People of this country have shown that they will back a leader one who makes bold decisions, is decisive and honest and one who does not think about himself, but for whole country and its people,” Tomar said praising Modi.

He also said Prime Minister Modi has given importance to cleanliness and it was his thinking that every household in the country should have a toilet.

BJP’s Haryana unit incharge Anil Jain said the Modi government took several bold decisions in the last on year including scrapping of Article 370.

 On fighting COVID-19, he said nobody could have imagined that the government would be able to ramp up things and be able to create health infrastructure to cope with the crisis situation.

Addressing the rally from Panchkula, Khattar slammed the opposition parties in the state, saying while it was time to collectively fight the pandemic, they chose to do “politics in everything”.

“During this crisis time, they should not do politics… Congress in the state is a divided house and there is competition of sorts amongst its leaders as to who is in control. I will not name any of their leaders, but everyone knows, we see this tamasha in Haryana every day,” he said.

The chief minister said, “If we leave the past few days, we were comparatively better than other states.”