After rout, Cong, PDP leaders keen to go saffron

Amit Khajuria

Tribune News Service

Jammu, May 25

The realignment of political groups in Jammu and Kashmir has started as the election results on Thursday indicated the expansion of the BJP in Jammu and Buddhist-dominated areas of Ladakh.

Many leaders in the Congress and PDP, as also in the National Conference (NC) from the two regions where the BJP has done extremely well, have sent feelers to party leaders that they would like to join the saffron outfit.

Sources said the leaders, seeing no political future for themselves in the parties in which they worked for decades, are inclined to join the BJP, some of them unconditionally. They are particularly enthused by the splendid performance of the BJP in their respective regions.

“At least the BJP has some direction, the party knows what it wants to achieve,” said a Congress leader fed up with the repeated failures of the party in elections. He said the party was unable to catch the imagination of people because it lacked clarity.

The party leaders are unhappy that the Congress leadership has made them look like the ‘B team’ of Kashmir-centric parties. They said at times, they were made to play a second fiddle to the PDP and NC. “Enough is enough, we refuse to suffocate ourselves in this directionless party,” a Congress leader, who also holds a position in the Pradesh Congress Committee, told The Tribune on the condition of anonymity. “When things are clear, I will come out openly against the party leadership,” he said.

The leaders of the PDP and NC in the Jammu region are also angry with their respective party leaderships for not taking the interests of Jammu and its people on their agenda. The leaders said the two parties had no interest in Jammu. “If the BJP accommodates us respectfully, we will not hesitate to go with a party that has a clear pro-people agenda,” a PDP leader said.