Amit Shah sets his sights on Kashmir: BJP President wants a Hindu CM in J&K




Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah has set his sights on a whole new mission, and it could be his most daunting one yet.



Shah is personally supervising his party's first-ever attempt to install a Hindu Chief Minister in Jammu and Kashmir.



BJP leaders and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh cadre are already working overtime to achieve the impossible.



Man on a mission: BJP President Amit Shah has set his heart on installing a Hindu Chief Minister in J&K

At a recent meeting to induct Moti Kaul, President of the All India Kashmiri Samaj into the BJP, Shah told leaders from the state: "I'm not so concerned about the other states where elections are being held. We are winning in those states in any case. I want you to devote all your energy on winning Jammu and Kashmir. Imagine the message that would go around the world, if we succeed in installing a BJP leader as the democratically-elected chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir."



BJP leaders are gung-ho about being able to fulfil their president's mission. Dr Nirmal Singh, member of the BJP's National Executive and the Chairman of the Election Campaign Committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections told the India Today Group: "BJP is going to create history in these elections. Prime Minister Modi's slogan 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas' has caught the imagination of the voters in the state who are fed up with the National Conference-Congress government, which has delivered nothing except corruption and under development. Mission Kashmir is not just a slogan, we are soon going to turn it into reality. Nobody thought BJP will win well over 272 seats nationally. We will once again prove everyone wrong. Amit Shah has already shown what he is capable of in Uttar Pradesh."



Consolidation

In the recently-concluded Lok Sabha elections, the BJP led in 30 of the 37 Assembly segments in Jammu and three of the four in Ladakh. Shah's necessary first step is to ensure that the BJP wins as many as possible of the 41 seats in these two regions.



In the last Assembly elections held in 2008, the BJP had won only 11 of the 37 seats in the Jammu region, and none of the 46 seats in the Kashmir valley or the four in Ladakh.



But the recent Lok Sabha results have given reason for cheer. If the BJP is able to replicate its Lok Sabha performance in the Assembly Elections, the party will end up with a substantial 33 seats in the 87-seat Assembly and most likely emerge as the single largest party in the case of a fractured mandate.

But the BJP is not relying only on Jammu and Ladakh. Shah aspires to make a dent in the Muslim-majority Valley as well.









Enrolment

Before they were hounded out of the valley in the early nineties, there were 2.5 lakh registered Kashmiri Pandit voters who were numerically significant in at least eight of the 46 seats of the Kashmir Valley.



BJP leaders and RSS workers have embarked on a massive enrolment campaign to get Kashmiri Pandits to vote from no matter where they are settled in the country.



Door-to-door enrolment is currently being carried out in Jammu, Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, and pockets of Punjab that have a heavy concentration of the Pandit community.



Moti Kaul explains the rationale behind the strategy to enrol Pandits: "We estimate that there are currently roughly four lakh eligible Kashmiri Pandit voters settled across the country. But out of these only 126,000 are registered voters. We are going all out to enrol the remaining and have made significant progress despite the state government creating all sorts of obstacles. We hope to get at least 30,000 new voters registered in time for the Assembly elections."



Kashmiri Pandits have a substantial presence in seats like Habbakadal, Ganderbal, Kulgam, Anantnag, Tral (which also has a substantial Sikh population), Amirakadal, Sopore and Khanyar.



In seats like Habbakadal, the voting percentage was as low as 11. The average voting percentage in the last Assembly Elections was in the low thirties.



Kashmiri Pandits constitute more than 10 per cent of the electorate in these constituencies, and can significantly alter voting dynamics.



'Defection'

The BJP leadership is in touch with several prominent leaders who have a strong support base and are unhappy in their present parties. In the past few weeks many senior state level leaders have been already been inducted into the BJP. The strategy of giving tickets to prominent rebels worked well for the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections, and Shah now hopes to replicate the tactic.



Coalition

To boost its post-poll position, the BJP is also looking at forging different kinds of tactical understandings with some of the smaller regional players in the state. Seat-sharing talks are on with the Panther's Party of Dr Bhim Singh.



BJP leaders are also in touch with the Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust, which has pockets of influence in Ladakh. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Khomeini Trust performed exceedingly well in Kargil and Zanskar. The trust's candidate lost to BJP's Thustan Chhewang on the Leh seat by just 36 votes in the May Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP also hopes to strengthen and indirectly benefit from the performance of the Awami Ittehad Party of Engineer Sheikh Abdur Rashid and Sajjad Lone's J&K People's Conference.



Set up in June 2013, the Awami Ittehad Party won by more than 20,000 votes in the Lok Sabha elections in the Baramulla and Anantnag seats. Former separatist Sajjad Lone's party is emerging as a force to reckon with and is slated to do well in least five seats in the Valley.



The better the Ittehad and People's Conference do, the more they are likely to damage the prospects of Mehbooba Mufti's PDP and Omar Abdullah's National Conference.



While the BJP is yet to officially kick off its campaign in J&K, alarm bells are already ringing in other political parties who fear that the BJP's tactics will end up further polarising the electorate in the state.



Devendar Rana of the National Conference, who is also the Political Advisor to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, said: "In a democracy the will of the people shall prevail. Jammu and Kashmir is not Uttar Pradesh. I just hope that politics of polarisation is not played in Jammu and Kashmir because that could lead to a catastrophe."



PDP spokesperson Dr Sameer Kaul said: "Electorally what the BJP is trying to is impossible to achieve. This is a Muslim majority state. This attempt is polarising and divisive. It will only lead to disruption and disorder."

Other experts are worried too. Renowned academic and political historian Siddiq Wahid said: "A lot will depend on the kind of campaign that the BJP will run. Jammu and Kashmir politics is a lot more complex than what the BJP thinks. If their campaign ends up polarising the state it can be very damaging."



Given the BJP's track record in Jammu and Kashmir any talk of the party emerging as the single largest in the state seems far-fetched.

However, given the electoral miracle that Amit Shah was able to pull off in Uttar Pradesh and considering how seriously he is pushing Mission Kashmir, no one can afford to dismiss the BJP President's plan as a mere pipe-dream, even though it is only a plan as of now.



The party hopes to consolidate its vote-base after the tough line taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing Jawans in Ladakh and also from the decision to call off talks with Pakistan.

BJP and PDP set for 'bipartite' contest





By Naseer Ganai in Srinagar

J&K will vote for its 87-member Assembly later this year

In the wake of the Congress and National Conference's (NC) crushing defeat in this year's general elections, the BJP and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are looking at the upcoming elections as a bipartite contest against each other.



Both the parties swept the state's six seats in the Lok Sabha polls, with the BJP wresting the four Jammu and Ladakh constituencies and the PDP winning the two Valley seats.



Elections for the 87-member Jammu and Kashmir Assembly are likely to be held in October-November.



Both the BJP and PDP have centred their strategy for the upcoming polls on maximising their general election gains. The BJP is trying to sweep Jammu, which has been a bastion of the Congress, and has named its campaign for the polls 'Mission 44+' as it aims at forming a government without the help of any other party.



As the state BJP unit does not have any charismatic leaders with strong local appeal, PM Narendra Modi has visited the state twice to motivate J&K cadres cadres and to send a message that the BJP brass is taking the elections very seriously.



In keeping with the BJP's strategy, Modi didn't visit Srinagar on either of his visits and chose to address people in Jammu and Ladakh.



Various other BJP leaders are making a beeline for Jammu and taking up issues which resonate among Hindus of the region, namely revocation of Article 370 and according citizenship rights to the Hindu refugees from west Pakistan who settled in Jammu after Partition.



In the Valley, the BJP may focus on areas where people comply with poll boycott calls of separatists and refrain from voting, and encourage Pandits to vote.

The PDP, on the other hand, is positioning itself as a pan Jammu and Kashmir party as it sets out to achieve its 'Vision 44+'. In the Valley, the PDP has presented itself as an alternative to the NC and cites its rule from 2003 to 2005 as an example of good governance. The party also takes credit for friendly relations between India and Pakistan during that period.



The party is also warming up to the Congress, which recently ended its alliance with the NC, and keeping options of a coalition open.



The party, however, is not raking up any controversial issues. For Jammu, where it says its vote-share went up in the Lok Sabha elections, the PDP has formulated a separate 'vision document' for development.

