It seems the cacophony of the hardline faction of the Hurriyat Conference in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in the last few days is just a way to cast Masarat Alam Bhat as Syed Ali Shah Geelani's worthy successor. And the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) understands it well.

Senior BJP leaders maintain that the separatist group wants to establish Masarat as Geelani's successor, besides trying to counter the 'nationalist state government'.

'Yasin Malik's appeal spreads out only to 1,000 square metres around him. Shabbir Shah is a paper tiger who poses as 'Nelson Mandela of Kashmir'. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq is limited to his downtown stronghold in Srinagar.

J&K BJP leaders think the Hurriyat conference needs a new fanatic person like Masarat Alam Bhat

'Abbas Ansari is a 'nobody' outside the Hurriyat. And Geelani is ageing. The Hurriyat needs a replacement for Geelani and in Masarat they have got it,' said Jammu and Kashmir BJP spokesperson Farooq Khan.

'Pakistan needs to have a hardliner, lest someone toeing the middle path capture the political space,' Khan added. 'Masarat hitting the headlines is the result of the Hurriyat's leadership vacuum. They, as well as their masters across the border, needed a new and more fanatic person to lead the separatist bandwagon,' said Jawahar Lal Kaul, who heads the think-tank Jammu Kashmir Study Centre in New Delhi.

According to Kaul, the only aim of the separatists is to 'mislead the people into thinking that the state is disputed'. The Masarat Alam furore 'is just a bogus political move to give leadership to the defunct ideas of the Hurriyat,' Kaul added.

A senior functionary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) told Mail Today that separatists had lost much ground after the last election. 'Separatist- turned-politician Sajjad Gani Lone has become a minister in the state Cabinet from the BJP quota.

The fact that BJP is in power in J&K, coupled with instances of such defeat to the separatist ideas, are evidences of the changing times and discourse in Kashmir,' he said. Political observers also feel that most of the regions in the state have remained unaffected despite the anti-India noises made by the separatists.

According to Kaul, it could safely be said that only five districts in the state—Srinagar, Anantnag, Baramulla, Shopian and Pulwama—were affected by the Hurriyat's politics. 'The popular perception of J&K as 'disputed' is far from reality. Look at the separatists' strategy of using the media to their end.

'They call for strikes on Fridays when most people would shut shops to attend the namaaz. So the markets look deserted. When people come out of a mosque, a handful of troublemakers, waiting outside, start pelting stones on the police.