J&K Assembly Polls: Does BJP's List Fiasco Point to a Crisis Within?

It comes at a time when the party faces a formidable political challenge by the NC-Congress alliance.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) on Monday withdrew the list of its candidates in the fray ahead of next month’s highly anticipated assembly elections, triggering speculation about whether it had begun to fumble on its most cherished project of cobbling together a government on its own after five years of reshaping the region to its own whims.

The initial document issued by the party listed out 44 candidates who were supposed to take part in the three-phased polls of the 90-seat assembly. The elections are taking place through the month of September. 1 October is the last day of voting.

But hours after the list was announced, the BJP revoked the document, especially after protests broke out from the rank-and-file of the party in Jammu, with the members alleging that the party’s old guard was being sidelined.

The current situation comes at a time when the party faces a formidable political challenge posed by the host of regional formations such as the National Conference (NC) that has joined hands with the Congress party.

Deserters Prioritised?

The initial list of names was rolled out for three phases; 15 names for the first phase; 10 names for the second and 19 names for the third. But several party workers were quick to point out that the lists had dropped some of the major names associated with the BJP’s J&K unit, many of whom have been former ministers.

Among the names left out were ten former high-profile BJP MLAs including Nirmal Singh and Sat Paul Sharma, BJP state unit chief Ravinder Raina and more.

Instead, the BJP appeared to have accommodated the deserters from other parties. There were new names like Mushtaq Bukhari, who joined the party after leaving the NC; Murtaza Khan, a former lawmaker of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Sham Lal Sharma who crossed over from the Congress party, and Devender Singh Rana who had previously won the Nagrota constituency in Jammu on an NC ticket.

In response to the protests, the party only removed the lists for the second and third phases while retaining the list for the first phase. The next day, however, a list of all 44 names was reissued with only one name being changed.

BJP Says It Was a Technical Error

While political observers and experts say that the withdrawal of the list is indicative of the growing resentment against the ruling party, the BJP’s state media co-convener Sajid Yusuf told The Quint that the cancellation of the list was due to a "technical error".

“Our first list was supposed to be only for the south Kashmir phase which is scheduled to go to polls on 18 September. But it also included the name of our candidate being fielded from Habba Kadal, a central Kashmir constituency,” Yusuf said. “That was an error, and so we withdrew the list and reissued it. If you see the final list of 44 candidates, it is the same as the first one and only one name has been changed.”

Yusuf said that the revocation of the list had nothing to do with the storm it kicked off in the media. “The mechanisms on the basis of which our candidates are decided are foolproof. We get feedback on the ‘Narendra Modi (NAMO)’ app that people have downloaded on their phones. Based on the recommendations, we choose our candidates. Again, had we been daunted by any opposition, we wouldn’t have issued the same list again,” he said, adding that the BJP will unveil the full list of all candidates by 29 August.

BJP is Facing Anti-incumbency in Jammu

Speaking to The Quint, however, several political analysts argued that the cancellation of the list indicated that all is not well with the party in J&K.

Zafar Choudhary, editor of the Jammu-based The Dispatch said that the BJP was facing anti-incumbency in Jammu, besides being riven by dissensions within the party and suffering from what he termed the “problem of plenty”. He added that the party’s recent internal survey suggested that it won’t win more than 20 seats in Jammu, and as part of the reshuffle, dropped 11 previous winners and distributed the mandates to new entrants.

“The party is also suffering due to its disconnect with the people and their sole trust is on the narrative run from Delhi,” Choudhary said.

Others said that the BJP’s political calculus has been complicated on account of the strong political show by the regional parties, especially the pre-poll alliance between the NC and Congress.

“The BJP is clearly unnerved by the results of the Lok Sabha polls conducted earlier this year,” said one journalist based in Kashmir. “It was mostly non-BJP parties that were leading in the assembly segments, giving an indication of how the assembly elections will pan out.”

For the BJP, Winning an Election is Priority

This journalist said that the BJP's situation was compounded by poor economic performance in the union territory despite the grandstanding associated with the scrapping of Article 370. “In these regions, the anger against the BJP is simmering. People were upset first with the GST and now they fret about outsiders taking over local contracts. Then there’s also renewed militancy in the Pir Panjal region”.

The awareness of this resentment, the journalist added, has imposed itself on the BJP’s calculations while it drafted the list. “Someone like Kavinder Gupta who has served as speaker of J&K assembly at the behest of BJP was found to be involved in illegal occupation of government land in Bhalwal tehsil in Jammu. So, the BJP did not want to take any chances.”

Political observers also say that the latest developments were an indication that the BJP was trying to win the elections at the altar of the party’s sustainability. Hence, the anger from the lower and middle rung. On Tuesday, the Indian Express reported that Minha Lateef, the BJP’s lone District Development Council (DDC) member in Pulwama, South Kashmir, had resigned after her mandate for the Pampore constituency was given to someone else.

“They are not trusting their local candidates. Instead, they are investing in the people they have poached from other parties which is something the BJP does elsewhere in the country too,” said Anuradha Bhasin, a veteran journalist from Jammu who runs the Kashmir Times newspaper.

BJP Has Been Trying to Recast the Whole Region

For the last five years, the BJP-led Centre has tried to organise systemic changes in J&K including the redrawing of electoral constituencies. Critics have alleged that these changes have been consistent with the BJP’s own electoral arithmetic.

The delimitation program added six seats to Jammu and only one to Kashmir.

Last year, the Centre passed the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill which seeks to nominate two members for the J&K’s legislature from the Kashmiri Pandit community and one from the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoJK) refugees, who were naturalised as subjects of J&K after the scrapping of Article 370.

The union territory already had the provision of nominating two women in the assembly. The power to make all five of these nominations rests with the Centre-appointed LG.

Political experts agree these changes already render the electoral turf of J&K skewed in favour of BJP. “Come to think of it, whereas other parties need a minimum of 46 seats needed to form a government in J&K, the BJP needs only 41. In the event of a hung assembly, it can easily harness the remaining five nominated members. They will obviously support the BJP because they are nominated by the LG,” the above quoted analyst concluded.

(Shakir Mir is an independent journalist. He has also written for The Wire, Article 14, Caravan Magazine, Firstpost, The Times of India and more. He tweets at @shakirmir. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)