JK News Today Commentary
Delhi election results leave a food for thought for the people of Jammu and Kashmir ; which of the political parties in the country is being favoured by the electorate the most. BJP has emerged as the first choice for most of the people in the country. Delhi voters have reinforced this perception by voting overwhelmingly for the party in the February 5 elections, results of which were declared on Saturday.
It is not just the return of BJP in Delhi after a gap of 27 years , it is the return of a new philosophy of the party that promises to deliver to each and every part of the country . It has broken its jinx in south where it has made significant inroads , and now it has recaptured Delhi ,which for over two and a half decades represented a sort of resistance to the saffron party . The Modi government at the Centre has broken the cycle of the opposition rule in the union capital with loud and clear message that BJP’s juggernaut is unstoppable .
There is a messaging for the people in Jammu and Kashmir , who sit on the northernmost tip of the country , lost in a self-belief that they matter to the nation most, that they needed to retune their thinking and break their idea and view about BJP. Jammu and Kashmir is part of India and it is now integrated with the national mainstream more than ever as there is only one constitution that governs them like the rest of the country. BJP’s rise in the country is epochal as it reinforces the point that it is the only party that has confidence of the majority of the people across states and union territories . It is not all about what its critics call about Hindu versus Muslim campaign of polarization . There must be something more than that which attracts the voters to the saffron party .
Jammu and Kashmir needs to understand and analyze the mood of the nation , which is increasingly getting defined by the population’s inclination toward BJP and its policies and rejection of the opposition , which is fragmented and without any concrete idea how to lead the states / UTs or for that matter the whole of the nation . They have failed people time and again..
Delhi’s election results should also veer the people to think and look up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for fulfillment of its urges and aspirations . The people in the UT know that they are unable to demand answers from their elected government as there is a standard response to each and every question that the government is without powers to deliver on its promises and until the statehood is restored , nothing much can happen or will happen . There is substantial amount of truth in it. The Omar Abdullah government is the most powerless government in Jammu and Kashmir ever. It is not having the powers to deliver on its promises , as the entire bureaucratic system is out of its control , and it cannot function as a normal elected government should have . The business rules have been framed and are not being forwarded because they have a fear that the constitutional authority that is to approve that might not do that . This may be a genuine concern or just imagination cannot be determined as the whole matter is out f the sight of people.
The Omar Abdullah government has been making a concerted pitch for the restoration of statehood as per is poll promise , but more than that it relied on two things – the promise made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the people of J&K, and that of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the parliament , and the opposition in the parliament .While there has been muted response to the demand for statehood by the BJP as it is yet to reconcile to the fact that National Conference emerged as a majority party in the September-October 2024 Assembly elections and it is also using the NC’s resolution in the Assembly calling for restoration of the special status to J&K as a ground for denying or delaying the statehood .The opposition too is silent . It has not uttered even a single word about the restoration of the statehood . This runs contrary to opposition’s big –ticket promise that it will work for restoration of the statehood for J&K . Congress leader and LoP Rahul Gandhi had made a big promise on this count, but after the election results showed his party at bottom of the ladder, he has not spoken even a word in the parliament or outside of it since .
This leaves people in J&K with only one option – to wait for the day when Modi will deliver on his word of granting statehood to J&K . He is the only redeemer
( Binoo Joshi is Editor of JK News Today, formerly correspondent of BBC and IANS in J&K)
