New Delhi, Sep 19 (IANS) Congress leader Pawan Khera on Friday hit out at the BJP for criticising Kashmir peace initiatives undertaken by former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh while remaining silent on similar engagement with separatist leader Yasin Malik by the Atal Behari Vajpayee government.

Responding to the BJP’s disapproval of the UPA’s handling of national security and back-channel diplomacy involving Malik, Khera posted on X a picture of Vajpayee with Kashmiri separatist leaders and described the brouhaha over the incarcerated Kashmiri separatist leader’s latest, controversial purported claim on peace initiatives as a “Toolkit to distract from #VoteChori exposed”.

Khera asked if it was true that during the Vajpayee era, Malik was made to speak over the phone to a top industrialist, through an intermediary.

The Congress leader said, “From Vajpayee Ji to Manmohan Singh Ji, when the state policy was dialogue and engagement, both the governments met all sorts of stakeholders.”

“If Dr Singh’s courtesy is to be questioned, perhaps BJP should explain Vajpayee Ji’s smiling photo-op with the Hurriyat leadership, or Advani Ji’s solemn pilgrimage to Jinnah’s grave in Karachi. Otherwise, we would all like to enjoy his silence for once,” said Khera, Chairman, Media and Publicity Department, All India Congress Committee.

Khera also asked: “Why was the RSS meeting Yasin Malik in 2011? The BJP was not even in power then? Why was the BJP-RSS-affiliated think-tank, Vivekananda Foundation’s leadership interacting with Yasin Malik?”

The Congress leader said, “Instead of feigning outrage at Dr Singh’s civility, the BJP would do well to revisit history. In May 2007, Yasin Malik was preparing to launch his Safar-e-Azadi (March for Freedom). Arrested on May 4, he began an indefinite hunger strike demanding the right to proceed. It was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who intervened with the UPA government and made sure that the March was allowed to take place.”

Earlier in the day, Amit Malviya, BJP leader in charge of the party’s IT cell, said on X, “Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) terrorist Yasin Malik, serving a life sentence in a terror-funding case, has made a shocking claim. In an affidavit filed in the Delhi High Court on August 25, Malik says: He met Lashkar-e-Taiba founder and 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan in 2006. The meeting was not his independent initiative but was arranged at the request of senior Indian intelligence officials as part of a back-channel peace process.”

–IANS

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