Seeing the Congress squirm over the issue of the release of prisoners in Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP stepped up its offensive on several fronts today. Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani took on the Congress in New Delhi, BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu in Patna and general secretary Arun Jaitley in Ahmedabad. Advani utilised the weekly BJP parliamentary party meeting here to declare that the Centre was not taken into confidence by the J-K government on the release of prisoners. The meeting was chaired by Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee. According to parliamentary party spokesman Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Advani said, ‘‘The Jammu and Kashmir government freed terrorists without consulting the Centre though it is being said that it was done so on the advice of the Centre. This is baseless. This is a lie. There is no truth in it.’’ Advani said there was no truth in the claim by Congress president Sonia Gandhi that the J-K government had got clearance from Central intelligence agencies on the issue. He said it was regrettable that intelligence agencies were being dragged into such issues. He added, the state had released terrorists against the advice of intelligence agencies. The suggestion of setting up a screening committee for the purpose was not considered, he said. Malhotra took exception to Sonia Gandhi responding to queries from journalists on the release of terrorists with ‘‘How dare you?’’ ‘‘With all humility, I dare say that the way the Congress has given a clean chit to the Mufti Sayeed government, it has given a filip to terrorist activity.’’ In Patna, Naidu claimed that the state was cautioned against taking any ‘‘hasty decisions’’ like the release of militants and non-enforcement of POTA. Naidu, according to agencies, appealed to Sonia to review the three-point common minimum programme envisaging release of terrorists in a phased-manner, not to use POTA and disband the Special Operation Group. Jaitley called upon the J-K government to reconsider its policies and tackle terrorism with an iron hand.
