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  India   Politics  07 Aug 2019  Trinamul stance on Article 370 open-ended

Trinamul stance on Article 370 open-ended

THE ASIAN AGE. | SREEPARNA CHAKRABARTY
Published : Aug 7, 2019, 2:57 am IST
Updated : Aug 7, 2019, 2:57 am IST

The BJP which made big inroads into West Bengal in the recent Lok Sabha polls, winning 18 seats, has been riding high on Hindutva.

TMC chief whip in Rajya Sabha Sukhendu Shekhar Roy
 TMC chief whip in Rajya Sabha Sukhendu Shekhar Roy

New Delhi: The Trinamul Congress’ decision to stage a walkout and not vote in Parliament on the Bill to abrogate Article 370 seems to have been made out of a pragmatic political choice.

Sources said that ahead of the 2021 Assembly polls in West Bengal, the TMC, which is banking heavily on Bengali nationalism to counter the BJP’s heady Hindutva agenda, does not its want archrivals to go around the state claiming to have fulfilled Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mukherjee’s vision of doing away with Article 370, which guaranteed a special status to J&K.

Mukherjee had been a minister in the Nehru Cabinet and was vehemently opposed to Article 370. He had passed away in prison in Kashmir while on protest against the clause.

The BJP which made big inroads into West Bengal in the recent Lok Sabha polls, winning 18 seats, has been riding high on Hindutva. However, after the bust of a statue of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was vandalised during a rally of BJP chief Amit Shah before the polls, the TMC tried to turn it into a matter of Bengali nationalism, which it wants to further use in the run-up to the Assembly polls.

That the TMC kept the line open-ended on Article 370 was evident by its decision of not voting against the Jammu and Kashmir Bills but rather deciding to walk out in both Houses.

After Bill was passed in Rajya Sabha, the TMC chief whip in Rajya Sabha Sukhendu Shekhar Roy posted a cryptic tweet: “Decades old Comedy of Errors are being rectified now. It was a thunderbolt today. Many more in the offing? Change is the wheel of our national life. We are mortals. But the nation is not. We must not sing Yesterday Once More. Let it be today and tomorrow”.

Tags: article 370, syama prasad mukherjee