Better late than never. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s decision to pull out of the Mehbooba Mufti Government in Jammu and Kashmir could not have come a day sooner. Even when the BJP allied with Mufti’s Peoples Democratic Party in 2015, questions had been raised on the propriety, given that the two parties held polar opposite views on the most critical issue of the way forward to bring peace and stability in the State.
But then it had been thought that a bold experiment such as this could be a game-changer in the State’s interests. Unfortunately, things didn’t pan out that way and the core differences continued to crop up in critical ways, eventually leading to the BJP pulling the plug. The reasons for the BJP’s move, which came as a complete surprise to the PDP and the Chief Minister, have to do with both the BJP’s interests and the national interest. The BJP was aware that it was losing its support base in Jammu region, from where its seats came and whose constituents were furious that the national party was repeatedly giving way to the PDP’s sectarian agenda.
There was also the impression, which senior BJP leader and architect of the alliance, Ram Madhav, confirmed, that the PDP-led regime had been discriminating against Jammu. The BJP is preparing for the 2019 Lok Sabha election, and nationally it would have been disastrous for it to have approached the people with an uneven alliance in place in J&K, especially when the perception was that the BJP had surrendered to the PDP. Clearly, the cost of partnering the PDP was bigger than the loss of a State Government. The loss in governance is really not that great, since the BJP-led Centre will now directly govern the State. Had the BJP continued in the alliance, it would have been accused of being power-hungry at the cost of its own prestige. National interests revolved round the manner in which unrest in the State was to be tackled. The BJP favoured a hard approach to militancy; the PDP wanted to go soft.
While the BJP lauded the tough measures the Army took in tackling the ground situation, the PDP found fault, and even initiated action against Army personnel. The BJP said that talks with Pakistan could not happen unless the latter ceased hostilities, but the PDP favoured unconditional talks. BJP wanted strict action against stone-pelters; the Mufti regime pardoned first-time stone-pelters. The situation in the Valley had been spiralling out of control, largely due to the PDP’s reluctance to act tough. Most experts agree that national interests had been adversely impacted. Now that the inevitable has happened, the Centre must move swiftly to strike at the militants and their overground sympathisers and street workers.
Discussion about this post