BJP leaders KJ Alphons, Jitendra Singh say Kerala Congress statements on Kashmiri pandits' exodus are attempts to distort history

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader KJ Alphons on Monday said that the Kerala unit of the Congress party has made "insane statements" on the exodus of Kashmiri pandits and the party has a distorted version of history.

He said that everyone knew that over 1.5 lakh Kashmiri Pandits were driven out on communal grounds, by the ruling dispensation, which was Congress or its supported governments.

Alphons' statement came as a reaction to the tweet (now deleted) of the Kerala unit of Congress in which it claimed that more Muslims were killed in Jammu and Kashmir during 1990-2007 than Pandits.

Talking to ANI, Alphons said, "Congress and its allies created a situation in which the pandits couldn't live anymore; they were murdered, there was a genuine fear for their lives, so they left...things have improved dramatically after the revocation of Article 370."

"Congress doesn't understand history. They have hugely distorted versions. Everyone knows that over 1.5 lakh Kashmiri Pandits were driven out on communal grounds, by the ruling dispensation, which was Congress or its supported governments," he added.

Meanwhile, Union Minister and BJP leader Jitendra Singh said that the tweets posted by the Kerala unit of Congress were just an attempt to distort history to cover up their own follies.

"It is just an attempt to distort history to cover up their own follies. History is witnessed and also supportive of the fact that all this was the cumulative outcome of a series of Congress blunders beginning from what is now recorded as the 'Infamous Nehruvian Blunders," Singh told ANI.

"I think all this began from the day when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah decided to determine the centre's approach towards Jammu and Kashmir, depending upon their convenience and mutual friendship," he added.

Singh stated that the Kashmiri Pandits community was made to leave their homes in the most painful conditions. There were a series of selective killings of prominent Kashmiri Pandits. On the contrary, it was BJP that came forward to rescue and protect them, he further stated.

"It was BJP leaders like Murli Manohar Joshi who made sure that there are certain seats made secure in some of the higher education institutions in engineering colleges etc," he added.

Further, he said that the Congress party has been following an approach of appeasement and it feels its vote bank thrives on an approach of appeasement of a certain section of society.

"They have forgotten that this is no longer going to pay and PM Modi has clearly changed the political culture of this country," he further said.

'Kashmir Files' has brought the spotlight on the killings and forced exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the valley after the Pakistan sponsored terrorists ran amok there in the late 1980s and afterwards.

The deleted tweet of the Kerala unit of the Congress posted from its official Twitter handle attempted to project a statistical perspective to the issue of the killings and exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits, arguing that 15,000 Muslims were killed during 1990-2007 against 399 Pandits.

To further dim the spotlight on the agonies of the Kashmiri Pandits, the Kerala Congress in another tweet, part of a series, claimed that over one lakh Muslims were killed in the erstwhile state in the wake of the communal riots (1948) after the partition of the country while no Pandits were killed in retaliation.

( With inputs from ANI )