Seven years after Article 370 was struck from the Constitution, the political battle over who shaped Kashmir's turbulent past is as sharp as ever. Union Textiles Minister Giriraj Singh took to X on Sunday, 25 October 2026, squarely blaming the Indian National Congress for what he called the nurturing of anti-India forces in the valley — and crediting the BJP-led government's 2019 abrogation with ushering in a new era of peace and development.

Posting in Hindi, Singh wrote: 'Kaangres ke paapon ka hi parinaam tha ki Kashmir mein Bharat-virodhi taakton ko badhaava mila!' — 'It was the consequence of Congress's sins that anti-India forces were given a boost in Kashmir!' He added that with the scrapping of Article 370, 'a new dawn of development and peace has arrived in Kashmir today.'

What Article 370's Removal Actually Changed

On 5 August 2019, the Narendra Modi government revoked Article 370 through a presidential order, stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special constitutional status. The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act followed, bifurcating the former state into two union territories — Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. It was the most sweeping constitutional change to the region since its accession to India in 1947.

The BJP has since anchored a consistent narrative around the move: that decades of Congress stewardship enabled separatism and militancy by keeping Kashmir constitutionally ring-fenced from the rest of India. Singh's post is a pointed restatement of that argument — framing the abrogation not merely as a policy choice but as a corrective to historical failures.

The Congress Record in BJP's Frame

The BJP's critique traces back to decisions taken under successive Congress-led governments — from the circumstances of accession and the entrenchment of Article 370 in the 1950s, to later periods when insurgency peaked in the late 1980s and 1990s. Critics of Congress argue those governments failed to integrate Kashmir politically or economically, leaving space for separatist movements to deepen roots.

Congress has consistently disputed this framing, arguing that Article 370 was itself a tool for maintaining peace and that the abrogation has not conclusively resolved the region's underlying tensions. The debate cuts to the heart of competing visions of Indian federalism and security strategy.

The Metrics That Will Settle the Argument

Singh's claim of a 'new dawn' is a political assertion — but it is one that hard data will eventually judge. The key indicators to watch: official figures on security incidents and civilian casualties in the union territory, tourism arrivals and investment flows into Jammu and Kashmir, and the trajectory of its elected assembly, whose restoration was itself a milestone in the post-370 political arc. How those numbers move will determine whether the BJP's narrative of transformation holds up beyond rhetoric.

For now, Giriraj Singh's post is a reminder that Kashmir remains live political terrain — a place where every anniversary, every incident, and every data point feeds an ongoing argument about who built the problem, and who finally fixed it.