NEW DELHI: The BJP today demanded an apology from Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani for his claim that Narendra Modi had sent emissaries to meet him on the Kashmir issue.

Rejecting Geelani's claim as "baseless and mischievous", BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said no representative of the Gujarat Chief Minister has ever met the separatist leader.

"We would like to demand from Geelani that he must apologise for making this false and unfounded statement," Prasad told reporters here.

Geelani had yesterday claimed that two emissaries of Modi had approached him on March 22 for a meeting with him while he was in Delhi for treatment. The separatist leader said he rejected the offer citing Modi's RSS background.

"The BJP would like to emphasise that the said claim is totally baseless, unfounded, mischievous, malicious and full of prejudices against the BJP. We would like to highlight very clearly and categorically and with full sense of responsibility that no representative of Modi has ever met Geelani," he said.

Prasad said, "The BJP firmly believes Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and the BJP is committed to development of J&K where good governance is the biggest casualty and where corruption has led to loss of development and progress.

"People of the state need a corruption free administration. Young people need jobs, need development, good governance. But getting these fundamental issues addressed, separatist leaders tried to cloud the aspiration of youth," he said.

He said, "BJP strongly condemns it and reiterates that J&K is an integral part of India. BJP is firmly committed to the development of the state." — PTI

SRINAGAR: Amidst a controversy over Syed Ali Shah Geelani's claim that Narendra Modi had sent emissaries to meet him, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today questioned the secrecy behind the move and asked the hardline separatist leader to identify the pointmen to establish who was "lying".

With BJP denying Geelani's claims, Omar said the easiest way to find out the truth was to identify the emissaries.

"So SAS (Syed Ali Shah) Geelani has claimed that NaMo (Narendra Modi) sent emissaries to talk to him and other separatist leaders in Delhi, in SASG's case twice," Omar wrote on twitter.

"So who is lying SAS Geelani or the NaMo campaign? Easy way to find out — let SASG identify the emissaries who met him on behalf of NaMo," the Chief Minister said.

The Chief Minister wanted to know who the emissaries were and what offer they made as the BJP's position on Article 370 of the Constitution, which guarantees special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) was known, he said.

"Given BJP's position on Art370 & AFSPA can we know who these NaMo emissaries were & what was on offer? Why the secrecy?" he wrote. — PTI

NAGAON: Giving away farm land at throwaway prices to an industrialist who made enormous profits selling it was the much touted Gujarat model of Narendra Modi, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi alleged on Saturday.

“Modi sahab talks about his Gujarat model. What has he done? He deprived the poor farmers of their land to give away 35,000 acre of agricultural land to industrialist Adani at Re 1 per metre,” Gandhi said at an election meeting here.

“Adani then sold the land at Rs 800 per metre. His industry grew from a Rs 3,000 crore company to a Rs 40,000 crore company now just by selling farmers land at high cost and not through production. This he calls the Gujarat model,” Gandhi said.

“A toffee sells at Re 1 per piece here. If you give a toffee, the Gujarat government will give you one metre of land if you are Adani,” the Congress leader said.

He said that people of Gujarat had worked hard for years setting up textile mills and other industries much before the advent of the Modi government, while the Gujarat Chief Minister was claiming that it was because of his efforts.

“Modi makes speeches that he will bring change to India.

"One person cannot bring change, but only the collective effort of crores of people can do it,” he said.

Referring to Modi’s ‘chowkidar’ remarks, Gandhi said “Congress wants to make you (people) the chowkidar by giving you the keys of the country’s development.” — PTI

KUALA LUMPUR: The effort to find missing flight MH370 is at a "very critical juncture", Malaysia's Transport Minister said on Saturday as authorities mull whether to reassess a challenging search of the Indian Ocean seabed that has so far found nothing.

"The search for today and tomorrow is at a very critical juncture. So I appeal for everybody around the world to pray and pray hard that we find something to work on," Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.

The jet is believed to have crashed in deep and remote waters far off Western Australia.

But with no results from the multi-national search operation for the Boeing 777, which vanished on March 8 carrying 239 people, Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Thursday set a one-week deadline to locate the plane by mini-submarine.

The Australian-led search effort is relying on a single US Navy submersible sonar scanning device to scour an uncharted seabed at depths of around 4,500 metres (15,000 feet) or more.

Technical hitches, including the fact that the torpedo-shaped Bluefin-21 is operating at the extent of its depth limit, made for a slow start to the search.

Launched from an Australian naval vessel, the device has so far made six deep-sea scanning runs but has detected nothing.

"We have pursued every possible lead presented to us at this stage, and with every passing day the search has become more difficult," Hishammuddin, who is heading up the Malaysian government's response to MH370, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

As the search and rescue effort expected to be the costliest in aviation history wears on, authorities have indicated alternative methods may be needed, including possibly deeper-diving devices.

Hishammuddin said adjustments "may include widening the scope of the search and utilising other assets that could be relevant in the search operation", but he stressed the search would not be abandoned. — AFP