The Bharatiya Janata Party must utilise the opening provided by the deterioration in Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s health, which caused him to be rushed to the capital’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences before he could install daughter Mehbooba Mufti as successor, to rework the unequal partnership in the State and get a larger share of cabinet posts and a say in the governance agenda.
The Centre should also appoint a new Governor who can ensure that the security forces are not pushed around when trying to perform anti-insurgency operations.
An Assembly resolution in favour of Union Territory status for Ladakh should be part of the deal so that the BJP can honour the promise made at the time of the Assembly election and during the Hill Council-Leh election.
The anger in the BJP rank and file over the faulty deal crafted with the People’s Democratic Party after last year’s Assembly elections, principally by general secretary Ram Madhav under the guidance of Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who functions as party satrap in J&K, but with the RSS and BJP top brass fully in the loop, has already caused a total breakdown of relations within the coalition.
Skillful media management has suppressed news of the rage within the BJP, but on Nov. 28, Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh led party ministers and MLAs to Chief Minister Sayeed and complained of their powerlessness and the neglect of Jammu province.
The BJP won 25 seats from Jammu province because covert compromises by top central leaders before the elections caused abortion of Mission 44+ which could have brought a national party to power in the State for the first time in decades. The compromises were so shabby that they impacted the party’s performance in Jammu province also.
Thereafter, despite two-month-long negotiations and Mufti Sayeed’s anxiety to be Chief Minister to install his dynasty in the State, and despite both parties having equal number of MLAs in the Assembly, the BJP surrendered abysmally in terms of cabinet posts and portfolios. In contrast, the Congress party took major portfolios in lieu of allowing Omar Abdullah to be Chief Minister.
For the past ten months, development has focused solely on Kashmir valley and little to show in Jammu province and Ladakh. Instead, PDP ministers imposed 12.5 per cent tax on the Mata Vaishno Devi pilgrimage, which affected only Hindu pilgrims and is therefore perceived as a ‘jizya’ tax. Citizens blame the Chief Minister for this shabby decision but also blame the Governor and the BJP central leadership for their silence.
The BJP’s downward spiral after a spate of successes in 2014 actually began with the J&K election in early 2015, though this has gone largely unnoticed as the party joined a coalition government. Had the BJP fought the J&K elections with greater sincerity and won just ten more seats, the equations in the State would be different. Similar internal misdeeds dogged it in Delhi and Bihar, and there is little sign of serious thinking about the declining graph of the party in places where it is expected to do well.
To check the drift, the BJP must get its fair share of the political pie before accepting Mehbooba Mufti as Chief Minister, or unhesitatingly break off the alliance.
The BJP central leadership also needs to take a stand on the J&K High Court’s Dec. 28 ruling that the State flag must be flown in every Government office and vehicle of Constitutional functionaries. The Court also declared Article 370 a permanent feature of the constitution which cannot be abrogated or amended, which is contrary to the Constitution of India and the Constituent Assembly debates.
ABPLive.in, 1 January 2016
http://www.abplive.in/blog/mufti-illness-could-change-bjp-pdp-equation