Vadodara: Gujarat students hold rally to celebrate scrapping of Art 370

Vadodara: Students of some universities here in Gujarat participated in a rally organised to celebrate the Centre's decision to abrogate Article 370 which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir. Calling it a "nation building" exercise, authorities at the city-based Maharaja Sayajirao (MS) University, through a WhatsApp message, asked its 45,000-odd students, including over two dozen of them hailing from Jammu and Kashmir, to take part in the 'Bharat Ekta' rally, held here on Sunday.

Addressing the rally, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani blamed former prime minister late Jawaharlal Nehru for "two Constitutions and two flags for the country". "Now the task of our Prime Minister Narendra Modiji and Home Minister Amit Shahji is to merge the Pakistan- occupied Kashmir (PoK) with Jammu and Kashmir to make it an integral part of India, for which Parliament has already passed a unanimous resolution," he said. The rally was organised by a local organisation, Vadodara Nagrik Samiti. Earlier, Rupani flagged off the 'Bharat Ekta Kooch Yatra', a foot march organised under the leadership of former Maharaja of Baroda Samarjitsinh Gaekwad in support of the abrogation of Article 370.

The state-run MS University, in a WhatsApp message to its students and staff members, urged them to join the march. Its registrar Navin Ojha said the message was sent only to urge the students and staff members to join the rally. "There was no compulsion on them to join it. We thought it better to inform the students as we believed the event is in the interest of the nation, in order to make them aware what Article 370 stands for," Ojha told PTI. He said the university even took the approval of the Telecom Regulation Authority of India (TRAI) to relay the WhatsApp message. Some private educational institutions in the city, including the Parul University and the Navrachana University, also participated in the rally. "We wanted students of our universities to participate in this rally as part of the nation building activity. Several students came forward and joined the rally," an official from one of these universities said.