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| Common agenda is biggest challenge | | In regionally polarised, parties finding difficult to position words | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Oct 24: As the general elections in Jammu and Kashmir are being held at a time when the state is deeply polarized in aftermath of Amarnath land row, the parties are finding it increasingly difficult to hammer out an agenda which can be seen common for all regions and all people.
Amaranth land row saw Jammu and Kashmir bitterly polarized on regional lines and to a large extent on communal lines. The agitation is though over but it is still difficult to pick up the threads the social and political fabric had left four to five months ago.
While Peoples Democratic Party and the Bhartiya Janta Party are all set to go ahead with their aggressive regional agenda which may further polarize the situation hopes are high on National Conference for meeting a common ground. National Conference is the only political party which has its significant presence and cadre base in all parts of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Congress, being national party, could not afford to float a regional agenda but it played regional politics aggressively in 2002 elections promising Jammu region empowerment first time in 60 years. However, things are quite different this time as post-Amarnath land row Congress has been left with very little to boast of its Jammu-centric approach.
With the first phase of polling just three weeks away, political parties in are engaged in a jugglery of putting words and issues together to lure the electorate - but this is proving to be an uphill task. On Friday, the Election Commission issued a notification on the first phase of polling Nov 17 for 10 seats in Leh, Kargil, Poonch and Bandipore districts where nearly 600,000 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise, but the parties are nowhere close to releasing their manifestoes.
The erstwhile ruling Peoples Democratic Party is yet to announce whether it would participate in polls, leave alone its declaration of the issues it would address.
Party insiders say that on one level, the PDP would attempt to project itself as a party of the Kashmiri people all the way and would tailor its manifesto accordingly. That would mean keeping out the appeal to the electorate in the Hindu and Buddhist dominated parts of Jammu and Ladakh regions. If it appeals to these two regions, it would only be replicating the National Conference. “That we don’t want,” a senior PDP leader admitted.
On its part, the National Conference is struggling with ways to improve upon its autonomy plank, which brought it into power in 1996. “We are holding discussions,” was all that Omar Abdullah, who heads the National Conference, would say.
The major national parties - the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - too are confronted with a similar dilemma. They cannot appeal to parochial feelings for that would dent their national image.
“We have constituted a manifesto committee headed by our veteran colleague Mangat Ram Sharma,” Jammu and Kashmir’s Congress unit head Saifuddin Soz said.
The Congress will have to include the demand for fresh delimitation of constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir, keeping in view the popular sentiment in Jammu region - especially in the Hindu dominated areas. But, that is where it fears it would be a mirror image of the BJP.
Likewise, it can not afford to ignore the perceived discrimination of the Jammu region without annoying the electorate in the Kashmir Valley, where the feeling is that their area has been discriminated against vis-a-vis Jammu.
The Congress has its stronghold in the Jammu region, but the Valley is politically crucial.
As for the BJP, it realises that its demand for removing Article 370 of the constitution that gives special status to Kashmir is an oversold issue that has lost its appeal.
So it would have to list some kind of appeal, party sources said, for the Muslim population and that is not possible without paying a price in the Hindu areas where it hopes to get votes this time in larger numbers. |
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