Jammu and Kashmir Sniffs Post-Poll Possibilities
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Farooq Abdullah & Ram Madhav Signal Scope For Cooperations in J&K
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, October 13: Two key political actors of Jammu and Kashmir – Farooq Abdullah and Ram Madhav — are dropping hints of future possibilities in the Union territory. The National Conference is hoping for an early call from Lieutenant Governor Manoj Singh on government formation.
Madhav in an opinion piece in The Indian Express dropped hints of the scope of possibilities in Jammu and Kashmir. Abdullah in his remarks after participating in a Dussehra celebrations stressed on bridging divide between Kashmir and Jammu regions.
The National Conference swept the Kashmir valley in the Assembly elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept six of the 10 districts in the Jammu region.
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In a 90-member Assembly, the NC won 42 seats while the Congress bagged six constituencies. The BJP won 29 Assembly seats to emerge a formidable Opposition in the UT.
“We have to treat the people of Jammu well,” Farooq Abdullah told reporters after attending a Dussehra celebration. The NC patriarch stressed that the people of Jammu should “feel that the NC government is not their enemy. We want to take everyone together.”
The BJP had shared power with the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in 2014. Madhav was the architect of the BJP-PDP post-poll alliance in Jammu and Kashmir.
The moral political plank of the PDP-BJP alliance was built on admissions that while the Mufti Mohammad Sayeed-led outfit had the mandate of the people of the Kashmir valley, the saffron entity commanded the will of the electorate in the Jammu region.
Madhav offered his advice to Omar Abdullah, former chief minister of J&K. “He Must appreciate that the BJP government took some tough decisions about J&K not because it hates the states but because it loves Kashmir. It will be willing to do everything, including getting the full statehood,” wrote Madhav in his opinion piece.
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The BJP’s election in-charge for J&K also spelt out condition for getting full statehood. “The NC leadership should be willing to take the state towards 2047, and not backwards to pre-2019,” added Madhav.
But Madhav also offered a template for reconciliation of past strains. “The politics should be inclusive and sensitive. There should be space for differing opinions without subjecting people to the patriotism test all the times,” added the BJP leader, who was especially brought back into the party from the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS) ahead of the polls in the UT.
The Congress win on just six Assembly constituencies has evidently made the party an outsider in the UT. “The Abdullahs will seek comforts of power for the next five years,” said a Srinagar-based political observer.
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