BJP's finest hour in J-K

DEMOCRACY IN KASHMIR

The outcome of the Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir has brought smiles back on the faces of BJP leaders, who were otherwise finding it hard to come to terms with party’s defeat in Rajasthan and Delhi.

The saffron party has won 11 — an all-time high figure — seats in the state compared with its lone member in the dissolved Assembly.

Though the mandate is a clear reward for the BJP leading the nearly 60-day agitation over the Amarnath land transfer controversy in Jammu, the party leaders say "their plainspeak on discrimination against Jammu had paid them off”.

Making most of the polarisation the Amarnath controversy had brought in, all the BJP candidates have won with convincing margins from the Hindu-majority seats, while the Congress and National Conference have won mostly from the Muslim majority parts of the Jammu region.

Chaman Lal Gupta, who was elected from the Jammu (West) constituency, admitted that the BJP’s win was mainly due to the Amarnath controversy. However, he said: “The controversy had only stoked the fire of anger in the region, which had faced discrimination from the Kashmir-centric governments.”

BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley said the party would not explore possibilities of forming the government and would happily sit in the Opposition. “We have reason to be happy about the outcome in Jammu and Kashmir. We have done exceedingly well in Jammu and got the highest number of seats than in the past,’’ he said.

BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the party would keep "alive the issue of discrimination" by the Kashmir Valley against people of other regions in Jammu and Kashmir.