Perspectives on the recently concluded assembly elections

The BJP has failed to reach its declared target towards achieving which it was furiously campaigning: forming its own government in Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir. Its much advertised ‘Operation 44+’ in J&K did not evoke the enthusiasm amongst the voters that it had worked for. It drew a blank in the Kashmir valley. Even though early, analyses are already pouring out pointing to the fact that BJP’s increase in the number of seats in the Jammu region has been primarily due to the high pitch communal polarisation that it unleashed. Compared to its Lok Sabha election performance, the BJP lost over 10 per cent of the vote it polled then. The possibility of secular parties coming together should be explored in right earnest. This would be in the interests of preventing further communalisation in the state which has disastrous consequences. What sort of deals will take place, however, will only be known later. Maybe, by the time this edition of People’s Democracy reaches our readers.

In Jharkhand, the BJP lost over 9 per cent of the vote it had polled during the Lok Sabha elections. With its ally, the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU), it barely managed to cross the half-way mark. Even this, it could achieve after its high strung anti-Christian campaigns across the country. The campaign to observe December 25 not as Christmas but as a working day to observe Atal Behari Vajpayee’s birthday as the day of ‘good governance’ was aimed at such polarisation. Thus, in both Jammu and Jharkhand, BJP’s electoral victories, though significantly lesser than its Lok Sabha performance, were, thus, based on sharpening communal polarisation: the worst type of “votebank politics”. Despite this, the RSS/BJP failed to achieve its declared objective of forming single-party majority governments.
—People’s Democracy, Editorial, December 28

Some years ago, while speaking at an International Conference, one of the prominent scholars from JNU had said that for some problems ‘no solution itself is a solution’, and Jammu-Kashmir is one of them. The professor was indicating that status-quo is the only solution to the deceptive issue of J&K. If somebody tries to analyse the recent elections in J&K as merely Jammu vs Kashmir and BJP vs PDP then that would be undermining the vitality of democratic process. One has to understand the undercurrent to gauge the deeper message of this verdict in the only Muslim majority state of India.
Since the fraudulent victory of 1953 when Sheikh Abdullah, with the tacit support of Pt Nehru, disqualified all the opposition candidates, people of J&K rarely experienced the real electioneering in assembly elections. PM Modi addressed as many as eight rallies in J&K, including the one in Srinagar, and nullified the call of boycott by secessionist groups. For the first time, election campaigning was conducted in full vigour by almost all political parties, including the smaller parties of the Valley. As a result, the turnout from the hometowns of separatists, Syed Salahuddin and Syed Shah Geelani, was above 60 per cent. And that is why in the government formation process, people of J&K are going to have higher stakes this time.
Secondly, J&K politics always revolved around the Kashmir valley, with the agenda ranging from  autonomy to azadi. This was the first elections where aspirations for development and governance superceded separatism. Drug addictions, anti-incumbency, post-floods rehabilitation, youths aspirations to be part of India’s growth story were clearly visible issues in the electioneering. Hence, while forming the government these aspirations must be addressed and no political party can neglect this.
—The Organiser, Editorial, December 27