Claiming Article 370 is an "integral part of the Constitution" and it cannot be amended, J&K state Congress chief Saifuddin Soz today challenged Narendra Modi to participate in a one-on-one debate with him on the issue.
"I challenge Modi to come and debate one-on-one with me on Article 370 after reading the constitutional history of India... Article 370 is an integral part of the Constitution of India... Neither Parliament nor any authority including the President can change it," Soz said at a press conference here.
"BJP has committed a mistake by choosing Gujarat Chief Minister Modi as its prime ministerial candidate, who believes in propaganda and gives facts which are not historically correct," he said.
"Modi is modern India's greatest propagandist. He is behaving like (Henry) Goebel of Germany, but today there is no place for Gobels," he said.
"Modi should know that during the NDA's six-year rule Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani and others did think that Article 370 cannot be abrogated," he said, adding that "...Sardar Patel proposed Article 370 to Parliament."
On the women's inheritance issue, Soz said, "The Congress party's position is clear that girls marrying outside the state will inherit the property and we did not allow amendment to an Act to deprive them of their right."
"Modi is wrong... Sara (Chief Minister Omar Abdullah's sister) will inherit property as much as is possible within the family, but it cannot be transferred to her husband as he cannot become the domicile of the state," he added.
Modi, at a rally in Jammu yesterday, had cited the example of Omar and his sister Sara's marriage outside the state to suggest that women did not have the same rights as men in J-K unlike in other parts of the country.
