Polls in mind, BJP dumps PDP

Vibha Sharma & Ehsan Fazili

Tribune News Service

New Delhi/Srinagar, June 19

The awkward political alliance in Jammu and Kashmir came unstuck on Tuesday with the BJP, citing the PDP’s “inability” to address core issues and improve law and order in the restive state that took a turn for the worse last week following the chilling murder of journalist Shujaat Bukhari and the killing of an Indian Army soldier around the same time, suddenly withdrew support to its partner of three years.

‘Frenemies’ at the best of times, the saffron party let go of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s hand and said it had become “untenable” to go with her any further in Jammu and Kashmir. The announcement, made by BJP general secretary Ram Madhav in New Delhi, set the stage for Governor’s Rule —  if imposed, it will be the fourth time since 2008 and the eighth since 1977 — and triggered frenetic talk of early elections in the state.

In Srinagar, Mehbooba, who claimed she was “not shocked” by the BJP’s decision to pull the plug on her tentative administration, gave one back and declared from her Gupkar residence after an emergency meeting with the top PDP leadership that her party has always maintained that a “muscular security policy” would not work in the state and that reconciliation was the way out.

“One can’t treat Jammu and Kashmir as an enemy territory,” she said, adding they had gone for the alliance after much thought and with the hope that “the big party” will help bridge the gap between the two regions. “Our alliance was not liked by people, but the ideas, for which it was made, were bigger. These included talks with Pakistan, ceasefire, reconciliation and confidence-building measures,” she said soon after submitting her resignation as Chief Minister to Governor NN Vohra.

The two partners had campaigned hard against each other in the run-up to Assembly polls in which the BJP won 25 seats and the PDP 28 in the 87-member House. 

The NC snapped up 15 seats and the Congress 12. Other parties won seven. But soon after results were out, the bitterness during campaigning was forgotten and an alliance forged two months after the December 2014 elections. They had then said that behind the “agenda of alliance” was the dream that the state would be pulled out of the unending cycle of violence. It's a different matter that the partnership was uncomfortable since the start, with the ideologically divergent parties differing, often loudly, on a host of issues and tactics even as the security situation refused to improve.