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| BJP under attack for its alliance with PDP | | Defending the indefensible | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 15: The "nationalist" BJP is under severe attack for its alliance with the Kashmir-based pro-self-rule PDP. It is receiving "criticism from its own supporters in other parts of the country as they found it difficult to comprehend why a party that holds nationalism as the core of its ideology would ally with a party that espouses separatist ideas in any form, be it separatism within a state or separatism from the nation". The general view among the BJP supporters in and outside J&K is that "the alliance is a move to win the election and the ideology of nationalism has been put aside to further political purposes".
Significantly, the BJP had faced similar criticism when it forged an alliance with the PDP to form the coalition government in J&K. The Congress leaders, the NC leaders as well as supporters of both the BJP and PDP and who not had said that "the alliance proved that ideology took a backseat in the quest for power".
The BJP-PDP alliance in J&K has been under grave stress due to a divergence of opinion between the two parties over several issues ever since its formation in the last week of February 2015. It is a different story that the PDP is holding its ground firmly and taking forward its agenda step-by-step and the BJP finally kneeling and facilitating the PDP's task.
However, the BJP think-tanks are defending the alliance saying the alliance has produced positive results and the PDP has been reined in. In fact, the BJP has fielded Shivam Shankar Singh, a senior fellow at India Foundation and the one who handles data analysis for the BJP poll's campaigns in the Northeast, to defend the indefensible.
Defending the alliance, he on Wednesday said: "But it has achieved a lot in the short period since it was forged. The PDP, which was known to sympathize with separatists in the state, now has to maintain a more balanced stance due to its alliance with a nationalistic BJP. The BJP, which many believed would only focus on a militaristic solution to the longstanding issues in Kashmir, is taking a more nuanced approach to the problems in the Valley. When alliances force polar opposite ideologies to work together, they also cause the development of a middle path towards solving issues. Several complicated problems that India faces need a middle path for resolution".
It is obvious that Singh is not aware of the ground situation in J&K in general and Jammu and Ladakh regions in particular. Both the regions have been gripped by anti-BJP wave, as the BJP has utterly failed to come up to the expectations of the people of these neglected and marginalized regions. It's PDP-BJP coalition government just in name. The fact is that the PDP is behaving and acting as if it is running a one party government in J&K. |
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