Madhopur (Punjab), Jan 26 (IANS) Hundreds of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) activists Wednesday hoisted the national flag near the Madhopur bridge, which separates Jammu and Kashmir from Punjab, to mark the 62nd Republic Day.
The flag was hoisted here after the party’s ‘Ekta Yatra’ or unity march fizzled out at the boundary of the two states Tuesday evening following the arrest of top BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Shanta Kumar, Ananth Kumar and Anurag Thakur.
The flag-hoisting was done near the memorial to the late Jana Sangh founder-leader Shyama Prasad Mukherjee here.
Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) president and MP Anurag Thakur, who was leading the march to hoist the tricolour at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk and was arrested with other BJP leaders Tuesday, returned here from Kathua town, 20 km away.
The BJP leaders later garlanded the memorial and addressed the rally. They blamed the central and the Jammu and Kashmir governments for bowing to separatists’ pressure and not allowing the national flag to be hoisted at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk.
BJP activists, who held protests along the National Highway 1A (Pathankot-Jammu), later withdrew the blockade.
The BJP’s Ekta Yatra, which started from Kolkata Jan 12, was planned to culminate at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk, a historic square witness to many political events.
The Jammu and Kashmir government, however, did not give permission for the BJP march as it believed that it could have reignited tension in the state where calm has prevailed after months of unrest and deadly street protests last summer.
