Govt’s new brief for ministers: Toe official line

The Government today decided to get its act together and speak in ‘‘one voice’’ on the J-K polls. Bothered by the varied...

The Government today decided to get its act together and speak in ‘‘one voice’’ on the J-K polls. Bothered by the varied views being projected by those in the government, a meeting was held at Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani’s office where BJP leaders and Cabinet ministers were ‘‘educated’’ about India’s real position on J-K.

A special booklet Jammu and Kashmir — The True Story — prepared by the External Publicity (XP) division of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) was circulated to all ministers at the briefing. The briefing incidentally was organised by the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry.

Among those who attended were BJP chief Venkaiah Naidu, and spokesperson Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Cabinet ministers George Fernandes, Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Shourie, Syed Shahnawaz Hussain, Uma Bharti, Sharad Yadav, T.R. Balu, Ministers of State Digvijay Singh and Vijay Goel.

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Principal Information Officer (PIO) to Government of India, N.J. Krishna and Director XP Monica Mohta were also present at the briefing.

And those on other side of the table — conducting the two-hour briefing — included Home Secretary Kamal Pande, Special Secretary (J-K) A.K. Bhandari, Director General Military Operations (DGMO) Lt Gen S.S. Chahal and other senior officials handling the J-K polls in the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Though Swaraj tried to underplay the briefing saying it was an ‘‘informal meeting to discuss arrangements for polls in the state,’’ sources said that the meeting was crucial to counter the anti-poll propaganda by Pakistan.

‘‘Pakistan was the first to say that polls in J-K were going to be a farce. It is a question of India’s prestige to project the correct perspective to the world. J-K elections are not like elections in Gujarat. It is not just an internal fight but also an external one,’’ said an official.

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So the ministers and BJP members, who had a public interface and spoke to the media regularly, needed correct inputs.

The government had also been embarrassed by the failure of the Kashmir Committee to involve all sections, including the Hurriyat Conference in the poll process. Swaraj, however, said after the briefing that arrangements for polls in J-K were going fine and people were coming out and participating in the poll process.

‘‘The public meetings are being heavily attended. As many as 8,000-10,000 people come out for poll meetings. That is the biggest benchmark for polls being participatory,’’ she said.

‘‘Basically we wanted to ensure that elections were going to be free, fair, credible and participatory. And all is going well. Elections in J-K are going to be like in any other Indian state,’’ she claimed.