K-issue needs to be settled amicably: Bhushan
Srinagar, Oct 13: Asserting that Kashmir is an issue and needs to be settled amicably, the senior Supreme Court lawyer
Prashant Bhushan Thursday expressed shock over the attack on him by three right wing Hindu activists inside his Supreme Court chamber and said he did not regret his remarks on Kashmir."If defending a victim of police atrocity is seditious, then I am happy to be called one. I have no regrets on my remarks on Kashmir. The remarks on Kashmir were my own views. I had made it very clear that I am giving my personal views on Kashmir and these are not the views of Anna or Team Anna," Bhushan said in an interview to CNN-IBN.He said Kashmir issue is an issue which needs to be settled and it needs to be amicably settled soon. “If it is allowed to fester, it will lead to enormous alienation among the people of Kashmir, which will have all kinds of frightful consequences in the future,” he said.Asked if he had any regrets for saying that there should be a plebiscite and if the people want to separate they should be allowed to separate, Bhushan said, “No, I don’t have any regrets. Those are my views. I realise that those views are the minority views in the country today. That perhaps the majority of the people do not share these views but I think the time has come for the people of this country to think about this issue very seriously, to think of what is really in the interest of the people of India, as well as, in the interest of the people of Kashmir. Allowing the situation to go out of hand in Kashmir will not benefit India or Kashmir or anybody.”Asked if he regrets his comments on plebiscite in Kashmir, the Supreme court lawyer said, “No, no, certainly not. The way Jawaharlal Nehru, our Prime Minister solemnly went and assured the United Nations that there should be a plebiscite and he would have a plebiscite in Kashmir. How can you say that these views are seditious or anti-national? You mean that this issue, which is for the benefit of this country as to how the Kashmir issue needs to be dealt with or settled, that this cannot be discussed freely and openly?”“Everybody in a democracy is entitled to say that ‘look if you don’t support this, what we believe in then we will encourage people to vote against you’ or ‘if you don’t support this, then we will oppose you’, but that doesn’t mean that ‘we will come and beat you up.’ You see, we have always; our campaign has always opposed violence, but everybody who has views on a particular matter is entitled to say that ‘look we will oppose you.’ They are certainly entitled to oppose me. If they oppose my views on Kashmir they can certainly oppose my views on Kashmir, but they are not entitled to come and beat me up or intimidate me,” he said.Bhushan said the Constitution of India gives right to even citizen, a fundamental right, to express his views, to defend anybody and to say anything, even about how Kashmir should be dealt with, or whether Kashmir should be allowed the right of self determination or not.