J&K polls: For Amit Shah, political veto is more realistic than complete majority

Jammu & Kashmir, one of India’s oddball states that holds elections once in six years as against the five-year national norm, will be going to the polls by the end of this year. It will be one of the most keenly watched elections because the BJP emerged as the single largest party in terms of vote share in the Lok Sabha polls, with over 32 percent of the vote. It won three of the six seats in the state. [caption id=“attachment_1658801” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  BJP President Amit Shah. Reuters[/caption] The party is hoping to do an encore in the assembly elections. While local leaders are talking of a Mission 44 (the half way mark in an 87-seat assembly), newly-elected party president Amit Shah asked the party seek an absolute win by taking on the two “families” who dominate electoral politics in the state. The two families he was referring to were obviously the Abdullahs of National Conference (NC) and the Muftis of the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP). Shah said: “The conditions in Jammu & Kashmir are very sad and the current government is running an establishment filled with corruption. It is not only the responsibility of state BJP activists but every activist in every state to ensure that the BJP wins there. Both the political families of the state have misused the money meant for progress”. Mission 44 is not a realistic goal for the BJP for the simple reason that the bulk of the seats are in Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley, where the BJP has never won a seat. The Lok Sabha win in May 2014 came from a huge Hindu vote consolidation in Jammu. Thanks to the separatist boycott in the Valley, where NC and PDP were the main contenders, the BJP led on vote share by making gains in Jammu, Udhampur and Ladakh. The PDP swept the Valley, but its popular vote was below that of the BJP at 20.5 percent due to the lower turnout. While Amit Shah is entitled to dream big, the problem is that the BJP is a big zero in the Valley – which accounts for 46 of the 87 elected seats. His real goal may be to win enough seats in Jammu and Ladakh to give the BJP a veto on who rules J&K. In the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP led in 30 of the 37 assembly segments in Jammu and three of the four in Ladakh. Even assuming all these seats stay with the BJP in the assembly polls, that total would still not cross 33 – 11 short of a majority. So, given that it has no base whatsoever in the Valley, which the PDP swept during the Lok Sabha election, Mission 44 is a pipedream. At best, the BJP can hope to run a government by allying with one of the two main “families” – both of whom Amit Shah attacked in his speech the other day. But Amit Shah does not speak without a purpose. So what was the idea of taking on both families if you know you may need one of them after the elections? An understanding of ground realities would be helpful here. The BJP won in Jammu and Udhampur largely because of the consolidation of the Hindu vote there. The Ladakh vote was close, and could have come from a shift in the Buddhist vote, and some marginal votes from the Shia Muslims there. This trend of the non-Muslim vote consolidating in favour of the BJP has been read right by the Congress-National Conference alliance. They know that if they stay together, this consolidation will continue to favour the BJP in the assembly polls. This is why the partners decided to separate for the assembly elections so that the NC can focus on garnering the Muslim vote in the Valley and the Congress can chip away at the BJP’s gains in Jammu and Ladakh. The chances are the two parties will have seat adjustments even without an alliance. Amit Shah’s blast against both “families” in the Valley is intended to retain the Hindu vote in the assembly elections. He is essentially doing what the Congress-NC alliance is planning: fight separately and join up after the polls once the seat numbers are known. The best Shah can hope for is to become the single largest party in J&K with, say, 25-30 seats, and seek support from the PDP either for half a term each or from the outside. However, even this is not an easy possibility. No Kashmiri Muslim party is going to find it easy to tie up with the BJP. There is thus the possibility that either NC or PDP may try and re-align with the Congress after the polls. The Congress has, in the past, allied with both of them. The BJP’s strategic goal is to prevent precisely that by ensuring that neither NC-Congress, not PDP-Congress can get to 44 seats even together. Amit Shah’s strategy is possibly to maximise the BJP’s seats to the 30+ region where it becomes the single largest party in the state – and vital to stable government. This will force a deadlock or an unwieldy coalition of three parties (NC, PDO and Congress). The last appears unlikely given the level of animosity between the Abdullahs and Muftis. But if sworn enemies Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar can kiss and make up in Bihar, one cannot rule a triple-headed alliance in Kashmir too. What the BJP gains is clear leadership of the opposition space – or the ability to dictate terms to the next government, whoever forms one. This may be Amit Shah’s real goal. This would make BJP central to J&K.