The Amarnath Shrine Board controversy on Friday took yet another turn when former deputy prime minister and BJP stalwart L K Advani threw his weight behind Raj Bhawan, saying the problem lay within the J-K’s ruling coalition and not with Governor S K Sinha.Advani, who had come for the Amarnath yatra, flew to the holy cave on Friday and returned to New Delhi soon after the day-long pilgrimage.“It is not Raj Bhawan. It is perhaps with the nature of coalition itself. I found that the problems arise more from the nature of the coalition here than because of anything else. It is not the Governor who is involved,” Advani told a television channel here. “I do not see the reason why the Shrine Board set up in respect of the Vaishno Devi should be given all kinds of facilities and the shrine board relating to Amarnath in the valley should not be given similar facilities.”Advani said the Amarnath Board was constituted through an act of legislation and “the Assembly which passed the legislation represents the wishes and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and so there was no question of controversy”. “The yatra should not be dragged (into a controversy). It was never dragged. It was there for many, many decades and suddenly it has been dragged. It is because of the nature of the coalition,” Advani said.Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, too, said there was no controversy on Amarnath shrine board issue, especially after Deputy Chief Minister Muzaffar Hussain Beig cleared the misconceptions regarding the ownership of the forest land that was “temporarily” given to the Board.“The land has been diverted to the Shrine Board in accordance with the Supreme Court guidelines and the state Government has not transferred the ownership rights to the Board,” Azad said. “It (land) has been given to the shrine board on a temporary basis.”
