New Delhi: Home Minister Amit Shah has said neither he nor anyone from the government has ever called the three detained former chief ministers of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir “anti-national”, and added that a decision on their release will be taken by the administration of the union territory.
Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti had to be detained for “some time” after they made provocative statements, the home minister said on Thursday night while addressing an event organised by media outlet ABP News.
“Please see the statements made by them, like the entire country will be on fire if Article 370 was touched…In the backdrop of these statements, a professional decision was taken to keep them under detention for sometime,” Shah said at the news summit.
Such statements amounted to giving Pakistan an invitation to discuss Article 370, he said.

‘Govt won’t budge on CAA’
Jodhpur/Siliguri: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday declared that the Centre will not budge an inch on implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act(CAA) as the political acrimony over the new law grew intense with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asking if Prime Minister Narendra Modi was an “ambassador’ of Pakistan.
As rallies for and against the controversial law continued in several parts of the country, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan wrote to 11 non-BJP chief ministers to follow the example of his state Assembly in passing a resolution demanding that the CAA be scrapped. The CPI-M veteran said there is a need for unity in the country to protect democracy and secularism.
Former Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon also waded into the escalating row, saying the amendment of the Citizenship Act was government’s “self-inflicted goal” which has “isolated” India and that the list of critical voices both at home and abroad is “pretty long”.
Launching an “awareness programme” in Rajasthan in support of the CAA, Shah accused the Congress of misleading Muslims and challenged party leader Rahul Gandhi to a discussion if he has read the law.
“Rahul Baba if you have read the CAA then come to discuss it anywhere. And if you have not read it, I will translate it in Italian and send it you to read it.”
The BJP will take out 500 rallies across the country, beginning Saturday to reach out to three crore people, he said.
Shah, who is also the BJP president, said the party had to launch this programme because of the misinformation spread by the opposition parties on the amended law.
Let all these parties come together. The Bharatiya Janata Party is not going back an inch on the CAA,’” he said at a meeting held in Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s assembly constituency.
Hitting out at Modi for what she said “frequently comparing India with Pakistan”, Banerjee wondered if he was an “ambassador of Hindustan or the neighbouring country”.
Banerjee while addressing an anti-citizenship law rally in Siliguri said it was a shame that people were being asked to prove their nationality, even after 70 years of Independence.
“India is a big country with a rich culture and heritage. Why does the PM regularly compare our nation with Pakistan? Are you the prime minister of India or the ambassador of Pakistan?
“Why do you have to refer to Pakistan in every issue? You (Modi) should rather speak of Hindustan. We don’t want to be Pakistan. We love Hindustan,” she said.
Modi on Thursday dared the Congress and its allies to raise their voice against Pakistan’s atrocities on its minorities for the past 70 years.
Banerjee, who is also the TMC supremo, said the prime minister and his party spoke of Pakistan every now and then to divert attention from the prevailing economic crisis and unemployment in India.
Besides Banerjee and Gehlot, Vijayan sent identical letter to chief ministers Arvind Kejriwal (Delhi), Hemant Soren (Jharkhand), Uddhav Thackeray (Maharashtra), Nitish Kumar (Bihar), Y S Jaganmohan Reddy (Andhra Pradesh), Kamal Nath (Madhya Pradesh), Amarinder Singh (Punjab), Naveen Patnaik (Odisha) and V Narayanasamy (Puducherry).
The BJP while accusing the Congress of “politics of duplicity and expedience” over the CAA cited the opposition party’s manifesto for the 2018 Rajasthan assembly polls that promised all-round development to refugees from Pakistan, including those linked to their citizenship and rehabilitation.
BJP spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao shared the details of the Congress manifesto to hit out at the opposition party.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal while responding to a question during a town hall meeting in Delhi said he appeals to the Centre with “folded hands” to roll back the “controversial legislation”.
“We don’t need this law it is completely unnecessary. Where will we accommodate two crore Hindus from Pakistan,” the chief minister said.
But Union Minister Nityanand Rai claimed that opposition to the CAA is an “attack on OBCs” and that those protesting against the new legislation should be declared “anti-OBC” and “anti-Dalit”.
The minister of state for home claimed that most of the non-Muslims fleeing harassment in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan belong to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Dalits.
The Congress told Shah that NDA constituents and chief ministers of the ruling BJP were not accepting the CAA but the prime minister and he continued to abuse the opposition.
“Amit Shahji, Modiji and you have been made by the public to work as prime minister and home minister and not abuse the opposition leaders.
“Your allies are not accepting the divisive CAA, your own chief ministers are not accepting the CAA. Should we send you a Hindi translation,” Congress’s chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said in a tweet in Hindi.
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury accused the BJP of indulging in “dirty” politics with an intent to consolidate “Hindutva votebank”.
Yechury was speaking at a rally organised by the CPI(M) in Guwahati to protest against the CAA.

“Everyone including the Congress, is asking questions about the detentions. Surprisingly, Congress has forgotten that it had jailed Farooq Abdullah’s Sheikh Abdullah for 12 years in Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu,” the home minister said, adding that the opposition party had also incarcerated 60,000 politicians across the country for 19 months.
“And these people (the Congress) are asking us questions within six months,” he said, in a reference to the Emergency from 1975-1977.
Many political leaders in Jammu and Kashmir, including the three former chief ministers, were detained on August 5, the day the Centre announced abrogation of Article 370 provisions and bifurcation of the state into the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
While Farooq Abdullah has been booked under the stringent Public Safety Act and confined to his Gupkar Road residence in Srinagar, which has been declared a sub-jail, his son Omar Abdullah has been detained at Hari Niwas. PDP chief Mufti was lodged at Chesmashahi hut initially but later shifted to a government accommodation.

To a question pointing out that Abdullahs’ National Conference and Mufti’s PDP were alliance partners of the BJP at some point of time and the leaders were now being labelled “anti-national”, the home minister made it clear that neither he nor anyone from the government had called them so.
“As far as the decision to release them is concerned, this decision will be taken by the local administration and not me,” he said, adding that the administration will release them whenever it deems it suitable.
Shah said the situation in the Kashmir Valley was under control and day-to-day life was going on smoothly.
“Not a single inch in Kashmir is under curfew today,” he added.