"People should use their votes sensibly": PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti

Hitting out at the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the PDP chief said that "CAA is essentially a law to target Muslims."

Speaking over the proposed takeover of land for a railway project in the Shopian district, she said "Jammu and Kashmir, especially the valley, is too fragile. Its ecosystem is fragile. Our economy is dependent on the fruit industry. If you plan a railway line through every village without thinking about it, thousands of our plants, which are the backbone of our economy, will have to be cut."

Earlier on Tuesday, she wrote on X, "77 years after partition, the BJP is still wedded to the concept of two-nation theory of Hindu Mahasabha. To further their agenda they have thus implemented CAA to create another partition among our people."

"This sudden urgency in its implementation despite the case being pending in the honourable SC , is a desperate attempt to divert attention from its all-round failures and engage people in hate politics. Appeal all communities, especially Muslims not to walk into their trap," Mufti said in a statement on X.

On March 11, the Union Home Ministry notified the rules of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), days ahead of the announcement of the Lok Sabha election schedule.

The CAA rules, introduced by the Narendra Modi government and passed by Parliament in 2019, aim to confer Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim migrants--including Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis, and Christians--who migrated from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and arrived in India before December 31, 2014. (ANI)