Those who perpetrated violence in Valley in last few days will pay dearly, says BJP national vice-president

Those who perpetrated violence in the Valley in the last few days, and their "sponsors in other countries", will have to pay dearly, BJP national vice-president Baijayant Jay Panda said on Thursday.

He made the comment in response to a question after releasing a report prepared by a think-tank on Prime Minister Narendra Modi completing 20 years in public office.

Modi completed 20 years as the head of a government, including over 13 years as Gujarat chief minister, on Thursday.

Also Read | Unabated civilian killings belie govt’s normalcy narrative in Kashmir

Extolling Modi's career as "transformational", Panda said one of his many achievements was the abrogation of Article 370.

Many had raised concerns over its aftermath, but there has been a "drastic change" and "stone-pelting incidents are now things of the past", the BJP leader said, alleging that these incidents were "orchestrated earlier".

"In the last few days, there have been a few incidents of violence, killing of Kashmiri Pandits and non-Muslim people. Thirty years ago, when there was an ethnic cleansing against the Kashmiri Pandit community, it was downplayed at many places. This time, a daughter of one of the victims has spoken out so powerfully. That is the right spirit," Panda told reporters.

Neither the Kashmiri Pandit community nor others "are cowed down by this. Everybody is clear that this is a different India, this is a New India", he said.

"And, I can assure you that people who have committed this outrageous acts of violence and murders in the last 2-3 days, and their sponsors in other countries, they will pay dearly for it," the senior BJP leader said.

A woman principal and a teacher were shot dead at point blank range inside a government school in the heart of Srinagar on Thursday, taking to seven the number of civilians killed by militants in Kashmir Valley in five days.

Of the seven, four were from minority communities and six of the deaths took place in Srinagar, the main urban centre of the Valley.

Supinder Kaur, the principal of the Government Boys Higher Secondary School in Eidgah in downtown Srinagar, and Deepak Chand, were gunned down around 11.15 am just when the school had settled down to another day of online classes. There were no students in school.

Kaur, a Srinagar-based Sikh, and Chand, a Hindu from Jammu, were killed two days after The Resistance Force, a shadow outfit of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed responsibility for the deaths of three people on Tuesday.

The report Panda released was prepared by Delhi-based think-tank Public Policy Research Centre, and it took about six months to do it, its director Sumeet Bhasin said.

The nearly 90-page report charts the milestones in Modi's career in public office, first as the chief minister of Gujarat and then as the country's prime minister, including his various key policies and the Covid-19 vaccination programme run by India under his leadership.

Narendra Modi had taken oath as Gujarat chief minister on this day in 2001 and relinquished the chair in 2014 after an uninterrupted stay at the helm as he led the BJP to victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and became prime minister.

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