SRINAGAR: After a poor assembly poll show in Jammu, Congress leaders are calling for a change of strategy and adopting a soft Hindutva policy to fight the BJP in the Hindu belt of the region. In the recently held polls, Congress won six Assembly seats in the 90-member House.
The party won five seats in the Valley and one from Muslim belt of the Jammu region. Not a single candidate from the Congress won from the Hindu belt of Jammu, though the party’s vote share had increased by 5-10 per cent in the region in the Lok Sabha polls.
A senior Congress leader from Jammu told this reporter that time has come for the party to change the strategy to check BJP’s growing influence in the Hindu belt of Jammu.
“If you see the Assembly poll results, Congress is a force in the Hindu belt after BJP. Our candidates received votes in thousands, but we missed the opportunity,” he said. “Congress needs to find ways to counter BJP’s pro-Hindutva agenda. We have to adopt a soft Hindutva policy to counter BJP,” the leader said.
He said one does not have to become communal or fundamentalist but “we have to talk on religious point as well.”
The BJP, he said, is taking undue advantage of pro-Hindutva politics in Jammu. “We have to do something to prevent them from doing so. We cannot give them a free hand and cannot leave that space,” he said.
Another Congress leader said BJP is raking religion during the polls and “our party has to counter it by not shying away from talking on religious points. We have to counter the BJP on every front including the Hindutva front.”
The Congress has formed a fact-finding team to assess the reason for the party’s poor show in J&K Assembly polls.