NEW DELHI: It is a true tribute to Syama Prasad Mookerjee that the country is now working under one Constitution and one flag, while Article 370 is gone, BJP president J P Nadda on Monday said on the 72nd death anniversary of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh founding president.
Paying tributes to Mookerjee at the BJP headquarters here, Nadda said the Bharatiya Jana Sangh leader died under “mysterious circumstances” in a Srinagar jail in 1953 after being arrested for trying to enter Jammu and Kashmir without a special permit, a requirement due to its then special status and which he fiercely opposed.
Mookerjee had launched a stir against “do vidhan, do pradhan, do nishan”, a reference to Jammu and Kashmir having its own Constitution, prime minister and flag, after he quit the first Cabinet of Jawaharlal Nehru due to the Indian prime minister’s “appeasement policy” and their overall ideological differences, Nadda said.
He founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the forerunner to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in 1951.
The prime minister’s post in Jammu and Kashmir was abolished in 1965, but the state continued to have a separate Constitution and flag, both of which were done away by the Modi government in August 2019 when it repealed Article 370 and reorganised the state as a Union Territory after hiving off Ladakh as another UT.
Nadda said the BJP members across the country are commemorating Mookerjee, whom he described as a multi-faceted personality who was the youngest vice-chancellor of the Calcutta University at 33 years of age before entering the assembly of undivided Bengal.
He had a big contribution in ensuring the way one sees West Bengal, Punjab and Assam as part of India today, the BJP president said.
It is the BJP’s resolve that an incident like his death under mysterious circumstances is not repeated and that democracy in the country remained strong, he added.
Mookerjee’s mother had written to Nehru seeking a probe into his death, but her plea was not heeded, Nadda alleged. The government had then attributed his death when he was 51 to cardiac ailment.
