JK News Today commentary
On Tuesday evening when an announcement dotted the headlines that former national General Secretary of BJP Ram Madhav has been appointed as election in-charge for the Assembly polls ibn J&K, there was a little bit of surprise in some quarters. For them, the re-entry of Ram Madhav in Kashmir affairs was something unexpected and unanticipated . But they forgot that politics is a game of surprises , and personalities like Ram Madhav are all-time assets for the parties not just because they are party men committed to a particular ideology but because they also know how to respect political adversaries in a positive fashion.
Ram Madhav is a very familiar name and face in Jammu and Kashmir because of the role he played in educating Kashmir about the BJP’s real intentions vis-à-vis Jammu and Kashmir and how the party was interested in opening new channels of communication with the people directly . He did draw certain red lines , but these were guided by the national interest . He epitomized national interest both at the micro and macro level. On this particular issue, he was , and is uncompromising .
His return to J&K as an election in-charge for J&K Assembly polls, along with union minister G Kishen Reddy signifies that how much importance the BJP leadership accords to the polls in the union territory . The saffron party takes all elections in the country very seriously,, from Panchayats to Parliament but J&K is an altogether a new ballgame.
This time , the stakes of BJP are far higher than ever before. This is a real battleground in which the BJP has to prove a number of points for itself, the people of Jammu and Kashmir and the rest of the country , and also internationally. The Assembly polls 2024 in J&K are going to be unique. The party has to preserve and further its narrative that what all it did in the past five years was in the national interest and overall wellbeing of the residents of J&K , in particular .
There are certain palatable facts that have come to light after August 5, 2019 decisions of doing away with the Article 370 and 35 A , at the same time certain unpleasant things have also happened . The fault lies with the way Jammu and Kashmir indulged in self-belief over the decades , in which the Article 370 was believed to be integral to the link between the state and the rest of the country , and after it was revoked , BJP in the Union Territory did not match to the task it should have taken upon itself- to explain the essential components of the decisions and connect the people with that. That is a bitter reality as of today .It also is a fact that the J&K unit of the party left everything to charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the efforts of Home Minister Amit Shah without comprehending what it needed to do on the social, political and economic landscape in this territory.
Today , when the party is faced with a challenge , not only in terms of establishing itself as real voice of the people on the basis of what the Central government has done for J&K , especially hitherto marginalized sections,, it discovered yet again that there is a politically mature person who knows J&K like back of his hand , assigned Ram Madhav the daunting task . It is not only about the arithmetic of winning number of seats , it is essentially about capturing the mood of the people with passionate and well-reasoned out narratives .. This is what Ram Madhav can do, hence he is the natural choice to handle Kashmir once again, one of the most crucial moments for the party at national level .
