BJP support has slipped in Kashmir, Jharkhand: CPI-M

Despite its impressing showing, the BJP's support base slipped both in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand compared to the Lok Sabha results, the CPI-M said Thursday.

An editorial in "People's Democracy", the Communist Party of India-Marxist's mouthpiece, also suggested that the People's Democratic Party (PDP), the National Conference and the Congress could form a coalition in Kashmir.

In comparison to its Lok Sabha election performance, the BJP has lost over 10 percent of votes it polled in Jammu and Kashmir, it said.

"Its much advertised 'Operation 44+' in Jammu and Kashmir did not evoke the enthusiasm amongst the voters that it had worked for...

The "BJP's increase in the number of seats in Jammu region has been primarily due to the high pitch communal polarization that it unleashed", it said.

"The possibility of non-BJP parties, the PDP, the National Conference and the Congress allying to form the government as they together have a comfortable majority also exists."

The CPI-M said that in Jharkhand, the BJP lost over nine percent of the vote it had polled during the Lok Sabha election.

"With its ally, the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU), it barely managed to cross the half-way mark. Even this it could achieve after its high strung anti-Christian campaigns across the country.

"The campaign to observe Dec 25 not as Christmas but as a working day to observe Atal Bihari Vajpayee's birthday as a day of 'good governance' was aimed at such polarization.

"Thus, both in Jammu and Jharkhand, the BJP's electoral victories, though significantly lesser than its Lok Sabha performance, were, thus, based on sharpening communal polarization."

But said that the BJP's showing in the two states "will only embolden the RSS and all its tentacles to further sharpen communal polarization and, thus seek to consolidate the communal Hindu vote bank".