| JDS-Congress coalition in Karnataka unprincipled, PDP-BJP coalition in J&K principled | | BJP’s double-standard | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, June 1: BJP national general secretary and in-charge J&K Ram Madhav has termed the JDS-Congress coalition government in Karnataka “unprincipled”. “We are back to an unstable situation in Karnataka. In 1996, Deve Gowda became the prime minister with just 46 MPs in his party. In 2018, his son HD Kumaraswamy becomes the chief minister with just 37 MLAs. The Congress is cold-blooded and ruthless. It allowed Deve Gowda to stay in power for just 11 months. Let us hope Kumaraswamy gets a little more time at the Vidhan Soudha in Bengaluru,” he said while commenting on the formation of the JDS-Congress government in Karnataka where the BJP got 104 seats and the Congress 78.
At the same time, Ram Madhav asserted that the “unholy and unprincipled alliance that the Opposition parties seek to build across the country gives the BJP an excellent opportunity to turn to the people in the next election and ask for a 51 percent mandate”.
Ram Madhav’s assertion that the JDS-Congress coalition is unprincipled and unholy is flawed, despite the fact that both these parties fought against each other in the just-held assembly election in Karnataka. Similarly, his assertion that the move of the Opposition parties to form a joint front against the BJP in the 2019 general elections would be termed as unprincipled and unholy is also untenable. For, ideologically, the Congress, the JDS, the Samajwadi Party, the BSP, the RJD, the RLD, the NCP, the TMC, the TDP, the AAP, to mention only a few, are on the same page. These are “secular” parties and they speak for the “minorities” in one voice.
The point is that Ram Maddhav’s whole approach is as biased and lop-sided as it is flawed. He believes that he could take the Indian electorate for a ride by not reflecting on the BJP’s coalition with the PDP in the sensitive J&K State. It is the BJP-PDP coalition, which could be legitimately termed as “unprincipled and unholy”. After all, the BJP was known for an ideology (Ram Temple, Article 370 and Uniform Civil Code, strong approach towards Pakistan and terrorism in Kashmir and ultra-nationalism) which was considered anti-Muslim in Kashmir. Likewise, the ideology of the PDP was, and is considered, divisive, separatist and Pakistan-friendly not only in Jammu but across the nation.
Both the PDP and the BJP, unlike the JDS and the Congress, had sought and got the mandate from Kashmir and Jammu, respectively, on mutually exclusive poll planks. The BJP got the mandate from Jammu and Ladakh on nationalistic and Jammu-centric and Ladakh-centric planks. Likewise, the PDP got the mandate from Kashmir on self-rule, demilitarization and Kashmir solution planks. There was nothing that was common between the BJP and the PDP and still the BJP forged an alliance with the PDP subverting the spirit of the mandate.
The 2o14 mandate was a mandate for the reorganization of the state in the sense that BJP got 25 out of 37 seats in Jammu on the plank that a vote for it would be vote a for Chief minister from Jammu, the PDP also won 25 seats in Kashmir on the slogan that a vote for PDP would be a vote for self-rule and resolution of the Kashmir issue and the Congress won 3 of the four sears from Ladakh on the plank of UT status for the trans-Himalayan region.
Ram Madhav would do well to look all these facts on the face and then term JDS-Congress coalition in Karnataka “unprincipled and unholy”. |
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