Report from Jammu: Modi wave cannot dislodge Cong candidate

Jammu: Madan Lal Sharma, 62, the Congress candidate from Jammu-Poonch Parliamentary seat, is seeking re-election for the third term. Often in public meetings he speaks in Dogri, a Jammu specific dialect, to connect with the larger masses. And his survival, in the contentious politics of Jammu region, is also attributed to his strong regional identity politics. [caption id=“attachment_1469139” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  BJP’s Jugal Kishore Sharma campaigning in Jammu.[/caption] “I am connected to my people. Their immense faith in me is what makes my party strong, not just in this constituency, but in entire Jammu region. Every day I meet hundreds of people in my home, doesn’t matter whether in power or outside of it, and I would never leave their work unattended,” Sharma says.  On roadshows and in his well-attended rallies, he urges people to vote for Congress as it, according to Lal, is the only party that could maintain economic stability in Jammu and Kashmir. The Poonch contest is between three Sharmas’: Congress’s Madan Lal Sharma, BJP’s Jugal Kishore Sharma and PDP’s Yashpal Sharma. All three parties have chosen a Brahmin candidate keeping in view the impact of caste politics on the electoral one. The Jammu-Poonch parliamentary seat, with its 1.76 million voters, is the largest among the six Lok Sabha constituencies in the state. Congress has won the seat eight times previously, BJP three times and National Conference once. A soft spoken man, Madan Lal, an ex-Army man, came to prominence when he managed to win an assembly seat in 1983 on a Congress ticket. However, the coming Lok Sabha election will not be an easy battle, despite the presence of Congress stalwart Ghulam Nabi Azad who is popular across communities, and has been aggressively campaigning for Lal. But National Conference support and Azad should give Madan Lal an edge in the neck-to-neck contest. Bharat Gupta is an influential businessman from Jammu city, sitting in his maroon colored office overlooking a neatly trimmed garden, is not a fan of Madan Lal.  “I have never seen him in the area or meeting people. There is a strong Modi wave in town and in border areas, and this wave will definitely translate into votes for BJP candidate Jugal Kishore Sharma. I am sure Madan Lal will lose this time despite the NC support,” Gupta says. [caption id=“attachment_1469145” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Congress’s Madan Lal Sharma campaigning in Jammu.[/caption] Modi attracted large crowds for both his rallies in a region where the average BJP leaders struggles to be heard. “BJP president Jugal Kishore Sharma went to Vijaypur for campaigning but he could not get even 200 people to listen to him. After he left the venue we where told by people that they would vote for Modi doesn’t matter who the candidate is,” a senior journalist based in Jammu told Firstpost.  But despite a palpable Modi wave evident in the plains of Jammu, analysts say it might not be enough to wrest the seat from Congress for whom the support of National Conference has provided a renewed boost. Professor Rekha Chowdhary, who teaches Political Science at the Jammu University, says the development issues and the deciding factor could be the people living on the International Border and in Poonch, who come in large number to vote as compered to the city population. And they are the worst sufferers due to the ceasefire violations and the underdevelopment. “These people are going to play an important role in this election. Here, Madan Lal Sharma has an edge over BJP because he a popular leader among the rural population. We have forgotten the Poonch area which could also be a deciding factor in this election, it is Muslim majority area and would prefer Congress although no development has been done for them but despite that Azad factor could influence them,” she says. On the other hand BJP is leaving no stone unturned to ride the Modi momentum. Some high profile campaigners of BJP will join their local leaders on their campaigning trail including BJP national president Rajnath Singh, LK Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, and Nitin Gadkari. The BJP’s campaign is focused on three constituencies of Jammu, Udhampur and Ladakh although they have fielded candidates on all six seats in state. BJP candidate Jugal Kishor Sharma claims he is confident of winning the election: “The youth of the area is unemployed and civic amenities in the entire border belt almost non-existent. The coalition government has been indulging in corrupt practices and politics of soft secessionism. And this time they will pay the price people will vote for BJP." Whoever wins, the one silver lining is that religious politics has taken backstage to development issues in the campaigning, even though communal polarization remains intact on the ground.