Srinagar, Aug 21: The Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah—who’s a close aide of Prime Minister Narendra Modi—is understood to be working on a “plan” to install a Hindu Chief Minister in Jammu and Kashmir, reports in New Delhi-based newspapers Thursday said.
The reports come a day after Congress leader from the State, Sham Lal Sharma—a cabinet minister in the Omar Abdullah-led government—pitched for a Hindu CM for the State.
The fresh news reports claimed that at a recent meeting to induct Moti Kaul, president of the All India Kashmiri Samaj into the BJP, Shah told leaders from the State that he was “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 CM of Jammu and Kashmir.”
Shah, the reports said, is “personally supervising an ambitious, never before attempted, master plan to install a Hindu chief minister in Jammu and Kashmir. BJP leaders and RSS cadres are already working overtime to achieve what no one has so far thought possible—having a Hindu elected as chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.”
The news reports said Shah is working on a “four-pronged strategy” to make this happen. These, they said, is “consolidate gains registered in Lok Sabha elections in Jammu and Ladakh regions; Massive enrolment campaign of all eligible Kashmiri Pandits; Break away popular leaders who’re disgruntled with other parties; Tactical understanding with regional players.”
Pertinently, in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP led in 30 of the 37 Assembly segments in Jammu and three of the four seats in Ladakh. The party is aiming to win 44 seats in the forthcoming Assembly elections in the State. In the 2008 assembly polls in J&K, the BJP won only 11 of the 37 seats in the Jammu region, and none of the 46 seats in the Kashmir Valley or the 4 seats of Ladakh.
The news reports Thursday quoted Moti Kaul as saying “We estimate that there are currently roughly 4 lakh eligible Kashmiri Pandit voters settled across the country. But out of these only one lakh twenty six thousand are registered voters. We are going all out to enroll 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, the reports said, have substantial votes in seats like Habbakadal, Ganderbal, Kulgam, Anantnag, Tral (substantial Sikh population), Amirakadal, Sopore and Khanyar.
“On seats like Habbakadal the total voting percentage was as low as 11 per cent. The average voting percentage on all these seats in the last Assembly Elections was in the low thirties. In each of these seats the percentage of Kashmiri Pandits voters is more than 10 per cent. If the BJP is able to get most of the Pandits to vote for the party, then their votes can significantly alter traditional electoral dynamics on these seats,” a report in a Delhi-based newspaper said.
The report also said BJP leadership’s “strategy of giving tickets to prominent rebels worked well for the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections and now Amit Shah is hoping that these new recruits can deliver a seat each in their pocket of influence.”
“To boost its post-poll position the BJP 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 Thupstan Chhewang on the Leh seat by a paltry margin of 36 votes. 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 Jammu and Kashmir People’s Conference. Set up in June 2013, the Awami Ittehad Party won 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 on at 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,” the news report Thursday added.