Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Friday stoked a controversy saying that after the abrogation of Article 370 girls can be brought from Kashmir, apparently for marriage.
“Our minister O P Dhankhar used to say that he will bring ‘bahu’ (daughter in law) from Bihar. Nowadays people are saying that path to Kashmir has been cleared. Now we will bring girls from Kashmir,” he said at an event as quoted by newswire ANI.
A few days a BJP MLA from Muzaffarnagar district in Uttar Pradesh made similar remarks, saying that party workers were excited over the scrapping of Article 370 as it would now enable them to marry ‘gori’ (fair) Kashmiri girls.
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Under the now-scrapped Article 35A of the Constitution a woman, who is a resident of Jammu and Kashmir, will lose her property rights and the status of a state subject if she marries a person from outside the state. The provision also extended to the children of such women.
This is not the first incident that Khattar made remarks that have landed him in a row. Last year he courted controversy by making objectionable remarks over rape incidents.