BJP’s making forays into Kashmir Valley dominates fervent election campaigning
Baramulla: Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is not contesting in any of the three Kashmir Lok Sabha seats but the election campaigning in the Valley has been overtaken by a heated debate around who has been responsible for the saffron party’s making inroads in the predominantly Muslim region.
As high-decibel campaigns for votes get underway, former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti and her People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are being openly accused by their opponents of helping the BJP to poach on a turf where it would have been impossible for it to even trudge along on its own. The PDP and its leadership, by cobbling up an alliance with the BJP for government formation in 2015, unlocked the Valley’s doors for it, they tell the voters.
Ms. Mufti while defending her father Mufti Muhammad Sayeed’s decision to join hands with the BJP maintains that it was a “crucial move by a visionary to cage the beast”. Dismissing criticism that it were the PDP and its leadership which brought the BJP to Kashmir as unwarranted and denial and unwillingness to accept the ground realities, she contends that it was not possible to stop the saffron party after it had won majority in Parliament and as many as 25 seats in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly and that Mr. Sayeed only grabbed its hand as he wanted to deliver the erstwhile state from its problems and troubles.
National Conference (NC) leader and former chief minister Omar Abdullah who had termed the PDP-BJP alliance as a “A hug of South Pole and North Pole” and said that with this hug the capital of J&K has been shifted to Nagpur, is vociferously criticizing Ms. Mufti for “inadvertently aiding” the BJP by contesting elections against the INDIA bloc in J&K. “The INDIA alliance is combating the BJP, and it stands united on this platform. Those who are absent from it are inadvertently aiding the BJP,” he told an election rally in Anantnag where Ms. Mufti is contesting.
On the other hand, Mr. Abdullah openly accuses J&K People’s Conference (PC) chairman Sajad Ahmad Lone who is emerging as his main rival in the fight for the Baramulla seat and the J&K Apni Party candidates Mohammad Ashraf Mir and Zafar Iqbal Manhas who are seeking election from Srinagar and Anantnag-Rajouri, respectively as BJP’s “proxies”. J&K Apni Party has declared its support for Mr. Lone in the Baramulla seat which, Mr. Abdulllah and his NC insist, has been done at the behest of the BJP.
While Ms. Mufti says that the NC’s one-upmanship attitude had left no option for the PDP other than to field candidates and contest the elections in the three Valley constituencies, the J&K PC, the J&K Apni Party and like-minded groups in response to Mr. Abdullah’s criticism ask him to “look within and introspect” for he had served as a minister in the BJP-led NDA government from July 2001 to December 2002. “If BJP was good then how is it bad now?” J&K Apni Party leader Syed Altaf Bukhari asked recently.
NC’s critics are also saying that the “political fiefdom” of the Abdullah ‘dynasty’ that “brought only misery to the people of J&K” in the past is over. Mr. Lone, after filing his nomination papers before the Returning Officer here on Wednesday said that the people of Kashmir deserve to be represented by a new voice and the people of the rest of the country deserve to know through it what is happening in the region. He also said that if the NC gets the INDIA bloc to make a public commitment to the restoration of Article 370, he will not contest the polls.
Mr. Abdullah while speaking to reporters here after filing his nomination papers on Thursday said that his party’s stand has always been very clear against the decisions on Article 370. “We are seeking votes from the people against those decisions. It is not that we are alone. Many of our friends are also fighting this fight. God willing, the number of such friends will increase slowly,” he said. He also said that the INDIA bloc is hopeful that it will win all the five seats in J&K and the Ladakh seat as well.
The BJP is not silent in this war of words. The party has shaped its poll narrative around the “positive impacts” of abrogation of Article 370 and its leadership, in its public appearances, echoes Home Minister Amit Shah that “no one can bring back Article 370 in J&K”. The BJP’s J&K unit chief Ravinder Raina calls the Congress, NC and PDP ‘ek hi thali ke chatte batte (birds of a feather flock together), accusing them of neglecting the welfare of marginalized communities and exploiting the erstwhile state’s resources.
For a common voter like Abdul Razak Hajam, who runs a grocery here, “our politicians, particularly those in the fray, must tell us how they are going to mitigate the problems we do face on a daily basis and not indulge in name-calling and washing their dirty linen in public.” Another resident Nazir Ahmed Chalko added, “We know the past and who has done what. We have lived our lives whatever circumstances were there. We want to know from them what they are going to do to secure the future of our children.”