The mandate in the Jammu & Kashmir assembly election fractured along expected lines to reinforce the communal and regional divide that split the sensitive state.
NEW DELHI: The mandate in the Jammu & Kashmir assembly election fractured along expected lines to reinforce the communal and regional divide that split the sensitive border state during the violent Amarnath agitation last summer.
In the hung assembly that has emerged after an election that saw an unusually high turnout, the gainers, if they can be called that, were the two parties that took hawkish positions during the agitation, the BJP in Jammu and the PDP in Kashmir. Both increased their seat tallies considerably, with the BJP sweeping all the Hindu-dominated areas of Jammu.
Yet, ironically, the two parties that were pushed to the emotional margins of the state at that time, the Congress and the National Conference, are the ones poised to lead the next coalition government in the state. This is as much because of numbers (the two together are nudging the magic majority figure of 44) as political convenience with both having a clear convergence of interest.
For the Congress, it is important to keep the BJP out of power. For the NC, it is equally vital to curb the PDP’s growing clout in the valley. Veteran Congressman Karan Singh set the ball rolling for negotiations between the parties who, despite having burnt their fingers with an unsuccessful coalition experiment in 1987, were in secret talks before the polls.
“I think a Congress-NC alliance is more compatible,” Singh said as the results came in. NC leader Omar Abdullah, the man who could be the next chief minister, responded in equal measure, saying that such a development would not be a “bad thing”.
While government formation may be easier this time unlike in 2002, when it took the Congress and the PDP almost a month to settle on mutually agreed terms for a partnership, the deepening fault lines in the state can only make governance and administration in this troubled state difficult.
The PDP’s spectacular success in Kashmir is almost certainly due to a high level of separatist support. Several Hurriyat parties are believed to have quietly advised their backers to vote for the PDP to keep the NC out of government. So while on the face of it, the separatists seem to have lost out by boycotting the polls, they will have a proxy presence in the assembly with the PDP increasingly being pushed into the “soft separatist” mould.
On the other hand, the BJP’s successful exploitation of Hindu sentiment in Jammu will see a strong regional voice emerging in the state assembly. With US president-elect Barack Obama making it clear that Kashmir is very much on his foreign policy agenda, the dangerous communal and regional polarisation that has developed in J&K could whip up a volatile scenario that New Delhi may find too hot to handle.
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