Srinagar: Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh today said that India is ready to start talks with Pakistan if it stops pushing terrorism in Jammu Kashmir. Rajnath Singh made the statement while campaigning for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Candidate in Banihal.
The Union minister also said that the residents of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) will want to join India and said that the country considers them their own unlike Pakistan.
Singh also slammed the National Conference-Congress alliance over its poll promise of restoring Article 370 and said it is impossible as long as the BJP is there.
"Support the BJP to form the next government in J-K so that we can facilitate massive development in the region. There will be so much development that the people in PoK on seeing this should say that we do not want to live with Pakistan and instead will go to India," Singh said.
"I heard that National Conference leader Omar Abdullah sahab said that Afzal Guru should not have been hanged. I want to ask him that Afzal Guru should not have been hanged, should he have been garlanded publicly? …Form a government here too, seeing the development here, the people of PoK will say that we do not want to stay with Pakistan, we want to go with India…we consider the people of PoK as our own, come and join us. I have received information, some border fencing work is going on, that border fencing work will also be completed,” the Defence Minister added.
Rajnath Singh, a star campaigner of the BJP, earlier campaigned in Ramban of Jammu and Kashmir in support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Rakesh Singh Thakur.
The Union minister said following the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, there is a "sea change" in the overall security situation in Jammu and Kashmir, adding that youths now carry laptops and computers instead of pistols and revolvers.
Jammu and Kashmir is set to hold Assembly Elections on September 18, 25, and October 1, with the results scheduled to be announced on October 8.
The upcoming elections will be the first in Kashmir since the abrogation of Article 370 and will take place after a decade-long gap. In December of last year, the Supreme Court directed the Centre to conclude the election process by September 30, 2024.