BJP Gains Momentum in Jammu Heartland

Jammu: After a lack of momentum in its initial campaigning and facing difficulty in exploring effective public outreach strategies, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has gained ground in the Dogra heartland and will be a significant gainer over the National Conference-Congress combine and other competitors in the third and final phase of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections, the voting for which will take place on Tuesday.

The local watchers say that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s last election rally held in Jammu’s Maulana Azad Stadium at the weekend is likely to act as a catalyst for the BJP in the Dogra heartland. They maintain that Mr. Modi played the Jammu ‘victim card’ very well by repeatedly asserting that the people of the region have had more than enough unfair and discriminatory treatment to shoulder during the previous governments.

Though he did not say it, he was discernibly referring to what is widely believed in the Dogra heartland the governments dominated by the Kashmir Valley centric political parties including NC and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have been unjust to the region.

The Prime Minister made several other mentions to arouse the pride of the Dogras such as accusing the leaders of these parties of attacking the Dogra legacy in their speeches and especially the Congress of insulting and defaming the last Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh by calling him corrupt.

Apparently to appeal the Hindu psyche, he also said that he was speaking in the city of temples, ‘you have grown up under the shadow of Mata (Vaishno Devi), the results of these elections will start pouring in during the Shardiya Navratri and Vijayadashami being observed on October 12 will set off shubh shuruaat (auspicious beginning)’. He asked them, “Don’t miss this opportunity; don’t make a mistake. The BJP will remove your agony. J&K will have the first BJP majority government which will alleviate all pains of Jammu.”

It was the Prime Minister’s conscientious and deliberate engagement with the local populace. It has worked and is indubitably going to improve the electoral fortunes of the BJP in the Dogra heartland. In the last Assembly elections held in the erstwhile state of J&K in 2014, the BJP had won 25 seats-all in the Jammu region. Until a couple of weeks ago, the ground situation was suggesting that the saffron party’s footprint had shrunk for varied reasons as it was struggling to win back the voters. Some of the BJP leaders’ flaring the anti-Pakistan sentiments and starting the ‘three dynastic parties’ rhetoric in full force was not producing the desired results towards reclaiming its bastion.

The situation has changed dramatically, and the BJP leadership is rejoicing in it. Also, the failure of the Congress to make the voters identify with it in the Dogra heartland is reassuring for the BJP. The Congress has relatively been missing in action in the campaigning. A worried Omar Abdullah had last week asked the NC’s alliance partner to focus more on campaigning in the Jammu region where it has got the lion's share in the seat-sharing agreement with his party.

The BJP has, for the first time since 1996, fielded its candidates for the lowest number of seats, which is 62 out of ninety. While it is hoping to retain most of the seats it had won in the Jammu, Samba, Kathua and Udhampur districts in the last Assembly elections, some of its leaders privately admit that they are not any optimistic about performing well in the Pir Panjal region. In the Chenab valley, the party is relying mainly on the division of anti-BJP votes between NC, PDP and the Ghulam Nabi Azad-led Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP), except in Kishtwar where BJP candidate Shagun Parihar, whose father and uncle were killed by militants a few years ago, will win hands down due to the sympathy factor.

In the Kashmir Valley, the NC-Congress combine is all set to perform well and bag a maximum number of seats. However, in the districts of Kupwara, Baramulla and Bandipore which too will go to voting on October 1, Engineer Rashid’s J&K Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) is likely to play the spoilsport in a couple of segments. In south Kashmir and a few other constituencies of the Valley, the PDP has offered the NC-Congress combine a tough fight and either can carry the day in six to eight of these.