Ever since its release on 11th March, Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files has been in the eye of a political storm. While the film has the complete support of the BJP, several of the other political parties have been questioning why so much partiality is being shown to the film by the ruling party. Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on 18th March called The Kashmir Files a concocted story and a bundle of lies. According to Abdullah, the biggest lie in the film is that it has been wrongly shown that there was an NC government in power when the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits took place in 1990. The fact is that there was governor’s rule then, under the BJP-backed V.P. Singh regime.
On his part, Amit Malviya, BJP’s national IT cell chief, hit back at Omar Abdullah and tweeted, “Which part of #KashmirFiles does Omar find untrue? The fact that Farooq Abdullah, his father, resigned as CM on 18th January, 1990, and as if on cue, the genocide was unleashed on hapless Kashmiri Hindus starting 19th January, 1990? That he ordered the release of 70 ISI trained dreaded terrorists?”
Meanwhile, the Bihar government has decided to arrange a special screening of the film in a cinema in the state capital for MLAs and MLCs of the state on 25th March.