The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) slammed the Congress party over the remarks of INC leader Tariq Hameed Karra, who reportedly claimed that ‘Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel colluded with Muhammad Ali Jinnah to keep Kashmir out of India’.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra questioned if Congress president Sonia Gandhi had reprimanded Karra during the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meet, during which the comments were reportedly made.

“Today it has been published in the newspapers that in the CWC meeting held two days ago, some questions were raised regarding Kashmir. At the meeting, senior Congress leader and CWC member Tariq Hameed Karra created an atmosphere of confusion regarding Kashmir. He also said Jawaharlal Nehru ji had integrated Jammu and Kashmir into India and Sardar Patel tried to keep Kashmir out of India,” Patra said.

Patra alleged that Karra attended the meeting to press for making Rahul Gandhi the president of the Congress party. He further claimed that the ‘sole goal of Congress is how it can carry forward the legacy of the Nehru-Gandhi family and maintain the culmination of sycophancy’.

Comments ‘misrepresented’: Karra

Expressing concern over the comments being reported ‘outside’ the CWC, Karra said that his remarks have been ‘misrepresented’. “I had said that Pt Nehru had asserted that J&K be made a part of India, he didn’t want it to be called a theocratic State like Pakistan. I said that Sardar Patel had said that even if J&K goes towards Pakistan, negotiations can be held regarding Junagadh & Hyderabad,” Karra said.

“But JL Nehru didn’t agree and said that, ‘No, we don’t want that India is labelled as a theocratic State as Pakistan has been labelled’. I said this when we took up discussions over negotiations at that time when a discussion over negotiations at that time when a plan of ‘two nation’ theory had come.”