Three senior BJP leaders, including Leaders of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha were detained at Jammu airport on Monday. The Omar Abdullah government, not willing to take chances in preventing the hoisting of the tri colour at Srinagar?s historic Lal Chowk by Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) activists on Republic Day, stopped Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, and Anant Kumar from even entering the arrival lodge of the Jammu airport.
Meanwhile, BJP leader LK Advani talked to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to register ?protest? over efforts by Jammu and Kashmir government to prevent Jaitley and Swaraj from entering Jammu.
Elsewhere, the J&K government took into custody over a dozen local BJP leaders including two sitting legislators and imposed prohibitory orders under section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) all along the Jammu-Srinagar national highway passing through Kathua district from Lakhanpur.
Significantly, this was not the end of the measures taken by the state government to foil BJYM?s Rashtriya Ekta Yatra as movement of vehicles on link roads within various districts, especially along the Jammu-Srinagar national highway, had been suspended. The state has already sealed its borders with Punjab and has deployed 7 to 8 companies of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), apart from the Jammu & Kashmir Police at various entry points to Kathua district, as part of its plan not to allow entry of any vehicle from Punjab side from Tuesday morning. Senior civil and police officers from the state held a meeting with their Punjab counterparts seeking their help in controlling BJYM?s Rashtriya Ekta Yatra from entering into Jammu and Kashmir.
As their chartered plane landed at the airport around 3.15 pm and the BJP leaders started proceeding towards the arrival lodge, they were stopped by the police at the terminal itself and asked to return. However, the leaders refused and came at the entry of the arrival lodge. All the three leaders kept sitting outside the arrival lodge and they were taken to the VIP lodge at the airport. The leaders didn?t budge from the airport till the time of going to the press.