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Published 01 Mar, 2005 12:00am

RSS plans campaign against bus service

NEW DELHI, Feb 28: Hindu militants belonging to India's rightwing revivalist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) said on Monday they will meet this month to signal a campaign against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's foreign policy , including his decision to start a bus service across the Line of Control in Kashmir.

The RSS is the ideological hub of India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose leaders would be present at the three-day national convention from March 11 in Mangalore, in the southern state of Karnataka. Also participating would be members of the fanatical Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal.

The meeting is crucially planned barely weeks before the Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus service is due to start from April 7. "The meet is expected to discuss current national scenario and pass resolutions on some important national issues like the Kashmir initiative by the new government, Nepal situation and Naxal violence in different parts of our country, etc," an RSS spokesman said.

"The meet will also discuss strategies to proactively counter the aggression and onslaught of anti-Hindu and anti-national elements on our movement in particular and on the vital national interests in general."

The RSS is seriously concerned about the implications for our national security and sovereignty due to the "misguided international activism" of the present government and calls upon the government to immediately correct the course in the interest of the nation, the spokesman said.

"Decision to open Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service without proper consultations within the country is also fraught with serious consequences for the country's security. Especially the decision to allow passage for all people of both the countries without valid documents is insane," the RSS said.

"It will only pave way for hundreds of more terrorist modules to be created all over Bharat. Moreover this decision of the government is jeopardizing the status of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as defined by us in a unanimous resolution in the Parliament in 1994."

The 1994 resolution in parliament said that the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan was an integral part of India, which New Delhi was duty-bound to retrieve. "We would like to remind the government that PoK (Azada Kashmir) is an integral part of Bharat and the country will not tolerate any compromise on that issue. We are for more initiatives at the people to people level. However, that shouldn't mean sacrificing vital national interests."

The RSS described India's decision to turn the heat on Nepal's King Gyanendra by stopping Indian arms supplies to Kathmandu in protest against the suspension of democracy there, as an attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the Himayalan kingdom.

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