Kashmir issue one of Modi govt's biggest failures: Congress

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Sunday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Kashmir issue, calling it one of his government's biggest "failures", and wondered what India gained out of his foreign trips when he failed to stall the "pathetic" UN report on the alleged human rights violation there.

Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera underlined his party's concern over the situation in the Valley, and asked the government to make public the measures it is taking for the security of the pilgrims of the Amarnath Yatra, which is scheduled to start on June 28.

"Are you (government) capable of giving the pilgrims security?" he asked at a press conference here.The Congress has been waiting for four years for an all-party meeting on the Kashmir issue, Khera said.He accused the BJP of turning Kashmir into an "abhorrent laboratory" of its experiment of "communal politics" and alleged that the situation in the Valley is not only a failure of the central government's internal policies but also its foreign policy.

The state of affairs in the Valley has become worse than what it was in 1990s, he told reporters, noting that the Election Commission is unable to hold the Lok Sabha bypolls in Anantnag due to law and order problems.
A by-election recorded a paltry seven per cent polling under the present dispensation as against 71 per cent witnessed during the UPA's tenure, Khera said.

"Kashmir will be listed among one of the biggest failures of the Modi government. The situation there is becoming perhaps worse than what it was in the 1990s," he said, adding that 57 major attacks have taken place there in 27 days.

While the world used to see it as a territorial issue, the BJP gave it a communal colour, he alleged and referred to the gangrape and murder of girl from a nomadic Muslim tribe in Kathua.
Ministers of the ruling party communalised the issue, Khera claimed.
The Congress leader also targeted the prime minister over the "one-sided" UN report on Kashmir, saying he keeps flexing his muscles over his overseas trips but the fact he allowed it to come out is his "crime". 

"What benefits has the country got from all your (Modi's) so-called goodwill foreign trips about which you keep boasting about," he asked, termed the UN report "one-sided" and "pathetic".

"Such a report was perhaps never brought in the history of independent India. Has India not been embarrassed because of you. This is your crime Modi ji that you allowed such a report to come out," Khera alleged.He demanded that the government should call an all-party meeting on the Kashmir issue while underscoring the Congress' concern about the security of Amarnath pilgrims.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had recently released its first-ever report on alleged human rights violation in Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and demanded an international probe into it.