NEW DELHI: A fractured mandate in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections was always on the cards but what has come as a surprise to almost everybody is the meteoric rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Jammu politics.
The BJP that had won only a single seat in 2002 cruised to 11 seats in the current election, wresting seats from both the National Conference and the Congress in Jammu district and elsewhere in the region.
The vote share of the BJP that stood 8.57 per cent in the last elections is also expected to touch 15 per cent, within reach of the vote share enjoyed by the National Conference, Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The saffron party’s success, coming in the wake of the Amarnath land row, has left Congress leaders perturbed.
Former J&K Chief Minister Gulam Nabi Azad, who was forced to buckle down and resign in the aftermath of Amarnath controversy, sees red in the rise of BJP.
“It does worry me. The question is that secularism is getting shrunk at the cost of development. The rise of the BJP in the border state, which is facing terrorism, is a worrying factor for the entire country,” he said in Srinagar.
Head of Jammu and Kashmir cell in Congress Prithviraj Chavan describes the BJP rise as an effect of Amarnath land controversy.
“If the land row had not happened, the Congress would have swept the polls in Jammu,” he said.
In contrast, the BJP relates its success to giving voice to the step-motherly treatment of Jammu region and Amarnath row as only incidental.
Congress leader Karan Singh, however, sees it as a deeper problem related to the aspirations of people that saw culmination in the controversy.
However, he maintains that it would die down in due course as it is against the basic soul of the region.