BJP attempts to garner Muslim votes in Kashmir Valley

The BJP, it seems, is keen to adopt a nuanced approach to Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). The party has entrusted one of its senior general secretaries to do a comprehensive report on the issue. It is supposed to be ready in a few months’ after more visits by party leaders to different parts of the state.

This is following a high-profile delegation led by former party president Rajnath Singh, including general secretaries Ravi Shankar Prasad and Shah Nawaz Husain, to the state.

The team had called on members of the bereaved family of Maulana Shaukat Ahmed Shah, chief of Jami’at Ahl-e-Hadees, a separatist-turned-moderate leader who was killed in Srinagar on April 8.

According to sources, the party is not any more looking merely at its traditional constituency of Hindus in Jammu and the Pandits in the Valley.

It now wants to reach out to Muslim-dominated districts of Poonch, Rajauri, Doda and Kishtwar. In the Valley, it wants to look beyond the Bakarwal Gujjars and Shias, and make contact with the majority of Muslims.

The sources caution that this does not in any way mean that BJP has given up its age-old demand of the abrogation of Article 370, granting special status to J&K.