Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday announced that the Gujjar, Bakerwal and Pahari communities in Jammu and Kashmir will get reservation benefits in accordance with the recommendations of the Justice Sharma Commission which examined the issue of quota.
Asserting that Article 370 is a thing of the past, Shah stated that no one can bring it back.
Students from the nomadic Bakerwal community attend a seasonal school in the mountains of Tosa Maidan in Kashmir.
Shah arrived in the evening and was received at the airport by Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha and Union minister Jitendra Singh, among others.
On the Opposition's poll promise of statehood restoration, Shah said, "I want to ask Farooq Abdullah and Rahul Gandhi, who is going to restore the statehood. You cannot give it back. Why are you misleading the public?"
Few hours after their escape from police custody in Jammu and Kashmir's Ramban district, two top militants of Harkat-ul-Jehad Islami were on Thursday arrested from Doda district.
The rape-and-murder of the eight-year-old Bakerwal community girl has created a controversy after lawyers in Jammu called for a shutdown on Wednesday, demanding the case be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
"We want Mahatma Gandhi's India, return of our identity and honour which was given to us by the Indian Constitution and I am sure they have to return it with interest as well," PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti said.
The army rescued 33 Gujjars and Bakerwals trapped in flash floods along with their livestock in south Kashmir's Shopian district.
If the government is able to deliver the promised projects, the large number of youth will be taken off the streets and that is not acceptable to the Pakistan army nor the terrorists hiding in Pakistan, notes Brigadier Narender Kumar (retd).
Forest Minister Chaudhary Lal Singh and Industries Minister Chander Prakash had attended the rally.
'Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti acted single-mindedly right from day one of the three month-long crisis.' 'She pursued her chosen administrative course, unmindful of the menacing jingoistic drum beating in the coalition backyard.' 'At one point, I asked her if she was willing to pay the price for taking her line of action to its logical conclusion.' '"Yes," was her spontaneous response,' reveals Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir.
Police registered an FIR against the army personnel involved in the incident.
According to the chargesheets filed by the crime branch, the abduction, rape and killing of the Bakerwal girl was part of a carefully planned strategy to remove the minority nomadic community from the area.
The grief-stricken mother wishes for death penalty for the guilty.
The support for the eight-year-old girl was growing with politicians, cutting across party lines, seeking justice for her.
'It cannot go unpunished,' he said on Twitter.
The brutal rape and murder of an eight-year-old Bakerwal girl has polarised the normally peaceful town of Jammu, with the local Bar association calling for a bandh against what it termed the "targeting of minority Dogras" while the state police had lodged a case against lawyers who allegedly tried to prevent it from filing a chargesheet against the accused.
Today, hour-long, high-pitched 'debates' at prime time, replete with inflammatory visuals and captions, using half-truths, insinuations and lies, pour venom against Muslims and seek to divide Hindus and Muslims, notes Jyoti Punwani.
He said the BAJ had told the media repeatedly that Wednesday's bandh was not on the Kathua rape-and-murder issue as the case is in court now.
The NDMA added that the National Capital Region, and Hisar, Kaithal, Jind, Kurukshetra, Karnal in Haryana is likely to be again hit by the unusual weather on Wednesday.
The Bharatiya Janata Party will tone down its rhetoric on Article 370 and unveil a development-based vision for the voters of Jammu and Kashmir, where the five-phase long assembly elections are due in November-December.
To demand justice for the eight-year-old girl who was gang-raped and murdered in Jammu and Kashmir and the teenager in UP's Unnao, the Congress party led a candelight vigil to India Gate in New Delhi.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the family of the Kathua rape victim should get justice.
'She was just a little girl. She didn't understand religion. Who is Hindu, who is Muslim.' 'She was just 8! Why punish her?' The family of the eight-year-old girl who was gang-raped and murdered in Jammu's Kathua district say everything has changed since that horrific crime.
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