Delhi: BJP's Ekta Yatra ended without unfurling the Tricolour in Srinagar.
The day saw high drama as BJP's top leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley were kept in custody in Jammu till afternoon.
A handful of BJP workers managed to reach Srinagar, but were promptly rounded up by the state police.
BJP leaders unfurled the national flag in Kathua - a few hundred kilometres away from their intended destination Lal Chowk in Srinagar - after a night long detention ending forty-eight hour long high political drama with BJP leaders courting arrests on Tuesday evening while trying to enter J&K from Punjab despite prohibitory orders.
“The government has sent a message,” said Jaitley.
Amid tight security, the day however passed off peacefully in the valley. Half-a-dozen BJP workers though had sneaked into the fortified capital. They were arrested just a few hundred meters from Lal Chowk. Separatist leader Yasin Malik's attempts to march to Lal Chowk were also foiled.
And all this while, the official flag hoisting ceremony at the Bakshi Stadium in Srinagar went on as usual.
But there was some tension in Jammu where all the BJP top brass had assembled after their release with J&K Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather's car coming under attack.
“It was a peaceful movement. It’s the first time that the Republic day celebrations are taking place with two BJP leaders under detention"
After a month long high pitched political campaign, the yatris by evening returned to a hero's welcome in Delhi.
BJP may have tried to reach out to its core constituency in the country but as its leaders return home, the larger political battle awaits them in the budget session of Parliament.
The worry is that has the party not digressed from a well orchestrated anti-corruption and inflation campaign, through which it had successfully cornered the UPA.
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