BJP Wants to Get it Right But Which Way Will Mehbooba Swing?

BJP is keen on a partnership with PDP but will Ram Madhav’s visit seal the fate of alliance, questions Aditya Sinha.

BJP president Amit Shah is sending Ram Madhav to Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday, to try and re-stitch the alliance with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti. Yet the Central government’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) has no clue as to what she’s thinking.

A mini-crisis has been brewing in the state since Mehbooba’s father, the sitting chief minister Mufti Mohd Sayeed, passed away on 7 January. He had run a government in alliance with the BJP in J&K for ten months, which was unpopular in the Valley and led to a huge plunge in the party’s popularity. There is no doubt why Mehbooba hasn’t rushed to become CM – though everyone, even her rival Omar Abdullah of the National Conference (though tauntingly) – has been telling her to do so. She’s got herself into a bit of a cul-de-sac, which would make any input from the IB more valuable to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

Mehbooba, however, keeps her own counsel. She trusts no one. IB officials privately describe her as paranoid, though that may just be out of sheer frustration.

Flanked by Supporters and Dissidents

Since Mufti’s death Mehbooba appears publicly flanked by two men. One is her brother Tassaduq, who has been busy with his career as a cinematographer outside Kashmir. Tassaduq is non-political. When Mufti was home minister in 1989-90, Tassaduq was studying in Delhi. Along the way he married outside the community, displeasing Mufti and creating a distance between father and son.

His reappearance shows how Mehbooba relies solely on her family for advice. Even Mufti had his trusted circle, from which the IB could obtain information. Not so here.

Another person visible quite frequently is senior PDP man Muzaffar Hussein Beig. He has been at the forefront of trying to rebuild the PDP-BJP alliance. Mehbooba does not trust him, as he is perhaps the most unreliable person in the party. His visibility goes strictly against the other senior dissident, Tariq Karra, who publicly warns against any truce with the BJP.

Alliance On Tenterhooks

• BJP is trying hard to keep the alliance in J&K intact, sending Ram Madhav for talks seems to be party’s last ditch effort.
  
• Mehbooba doesn’t share a friendly equation with Delhi and its agencies unlike her father and his rival .
  
• BJP is keen to stay in the alliance as they would want to stay in power for the next four-and-a-half years.
  
• Mehbooba should continue with the alliance as the next elections are likely to decimate her party.
  

Trust Issues with Delhi

Mehbooba doesn’t share the same equation with Delhi and its agencies as her father and his rival Farooq Abdullah. In the 1980s Mufti had an IB handler and ironically became the handler’s boss when he became home minister. When Doval was posted in J&K in the late 1990s, he and Mufti struck up a friendship that was a decisive factor last year, when Mufti and the BJP were negotiating the alliance. Doval does not have a similar comfort level with Mehbooba.

It is partly a generational thing – both Mehbooba and Omar are less impressed with government agencies, though Omar does go through the formality of meeting Delhi’s officials. It’s also a “trust” issue that originates with the 2002 assembly elections (after which Mufti first became CM).

Delhi believed Mehbooba to have contact with Hizbul Mujahideen, the armed wing of Jamaat-e-Islami (whose spiritual head, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, reportedly sat with Mufti and brainstormed the PDP into existence); Hizb’s cadre helped the PDP win the 2002 election on the ground.

Mehbooba also made a habit of openly going to the homes of slain militants and condoling with their families. Such was the distrust that when then PM Atal Behari Vajpayee visited Srinagar in April 2003, during which he famously restarted the peace process with Pakistan by extending a hand of peace, Mehbooba was not allowed onto the PM’s dais.

Negotiating with Mehbooba

No wonder, then, that the IB calls Mehbooba paranoid. Still, the BJP knows that she is their last chance to be a part of government in J&K, an opportunity they never had till last March, and something they’d like to continue for the next four-and-a-half years (the J&K assembly has a six-year life). Mehbooba knows that by insisting on pre-conditions – no rethinking of Article 370, lifting the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) from some districts, disbursing money promised for flood relief in 2014 – she’s in a hole out of which it is difficult to emerge.

Mehbooba should continue with the alliance as the next election is likely to decimate her party.

Faced with this stand-off, Ram Madhav will meet Mehbooba on Saturday. He is an RSS hardliner, unable to see political shades of grey. In any case, Mehbooba as a budding chief minister would want someone of bigger stature for any negotiation. And to understand this, you hardly need IB inputs.

(The writer is a senior journalist and co-author with AS Dulat of “Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years”)