PDP gaining acceptability in Jammu too

Arun Joshi

Tribune News Service

jammu, december 17

Travelling across the length and breadth of Jammu, one encounters positive response of people towards the Peoples Democratic Party, hitherto seen as a pure Kashmir-centric party and that too that of Muslims. Today, this party is evoking acceptability among all regions and religions, something akin to the National Conference and the Congress.

The encouraging response in the plains of Jammu towards the PDP is greatly significant. During the 2008 Assembly elections, when the BJP had polarised the Jammu voters on religious lines over the Amarnath land row agitation, the PDP was seen as a party of Kashmiri Muslims. But, this time around the party has made itself acceptable among Jammu’s Hindus and Sikhs.

All indications from Kashmir are that the party has done well on the 46 seats in the Valley, where elections were over on December 14. Jammu people have realised that it will be better for them to support a party whose chances are considered high by many in Kashmir for government formation. Moreover, it has also dawned on them that the BJP which had embarked on Mission 44 plus in the Assembly of 87 is now nowhere near that mission, the bravado of the party leaders notwithstanding.

“The BJP was silent on the issues of Article 370 and discrimination with Jammu until the polling was over in Kashmir for tactical reasons. Now, it says that it had not shed its core issues. This is a contradiction and we have seen the party is just trying to play on our sentiments,” said Revti Sharma, a resident of Jammu. This is being echoed among all the well-read people and those who want to maintain the communal and regional harmony of Jammu.

During the past six years, when the PDP was in the opposition it spread its wings in the Jammu region. It has reminded the voters that the party had sent TS Bajwa, a party leader from the border belt of Jammu, to the Rajya Sabha in 2002, when it had came to power with just 16 MLAs from the Kashmir Valley. It had the option of choosing someone from the Valley, but it didn’t. Despite the fact that it had not won even a single seat in the Assembly elections from the Jammu region in 2002, it also nominated and elected Jammu leaders to the legislative council.

Party’s patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed has spent much of his time in Jammu, visited places and met people from all sections of society. He was accessible and took pride in telling people in the region that the PDP always spoke of peace and friendship with Pakistan. Although India and Pakistan worked out the ceasefire on the borders and the Line of Control, but there was a push by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed as Chief Minister of the state for silencing the guns on the borders. His favourite phrase that the PDP got the guns silenced from “Kathua to Kargil” has an appeal for border residents, who have seen exchange of heavy fire on borders, killings, cattle deaths and loss to property and farming.

A constant reminder by PDP president Mehbooba Mufti to the Jammu residents that the people here love her father Mufti Sayeed is also getting resonated. She reminds them of 1985, when her father was elected to the Assembly from Ranbirsingh Pura in the Jammu region to the Assembly. That time Mufti Sayeed was in the Congress. It has been made clear to the people that the PDP is looking for non-Muslim faces from Jammu to be part of the next dispensation so that there is complete harmony and balanced development of all three regions. This political thought is getting sprouted in Jammu.