BJP should keep election promises on Ram Mandir, Article 370: RSS

Nagpur: The BJP government at the Centre, which is completing one year in office should fulfil its commitment to construct Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and remove article 370 of the Constitution, RSS on Monday said.

The BJP government should live up to the expectations of the people while fulfilling promises made to the electorate, particularly on Ram Mandir and scrapping of article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, RSS's 'Akhil Bhartiya Saha Sampark Pramukh' Arun Kumar said here while speaking to reporters.

It was high time both Congress and BJP overcame the votebank politics while dealing with the issue of article 370. The article was supposed to be an interim arrangement and majority of Congress leaders had favoured scrapping it in the past, he said.

The people of Kashmir were suffering due to the article, he added.

On the opposition to separate townships for the displaced Kashmiri Pandits, Kumar, who himself hails from Jammu and Kashmir, said the onus to facilitate creation of separate townships was on the state and the Central government.

He noted that in the recent Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections, around 60 per cent voter turn-out was recorded in the areas belonging to separatist leaders.

Kumar said about 1,600 RSS volunteers were still engaged in relief work in the quake-ravaged Nepal in coordination with international organisations.

Talking about the organisational set-up of RSS, he said that the organisation has 43,000 'shakhas' (branches) in India, and operates in 35 countries.

As many as 876 volunteers between the age group of 18 to 40 were taking part in the ongoing third-year training camp of RSS, he said, adding that they were from variety of professions, including 164 teachers, 20 engineers, 19 lawyers and two physicians.

A big chunk, 470 were from north India, followed by 73 Telugu-speakers, 71 Marathi-speakers and 57 Malayalam-speakers, he said.

The training included disaster management too, he said.

The camp would end on June 4.