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| BJP has forfeited all rights to criticise NC & Congress | | Recapturing Lost Space | |
STARK REALITY
RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Apr 30: The state unit of the BJP still believes that it can recapture the political place it lost on April 13, when elections to six seats in the J&K Legislative Council were held. The BJP leadership also perhaps believes that it can mobilize public opinion by raking up nation-centric or Jammu-centric issues. It is obvious that the state BJP leadership is living in a fool’s paradise. It just can’t recapture the political ground it lost on April 13. Nor can it mobilize public opinion anymore by raking up nation-centric issues.
Yesterday, the party president, who has lost his moral authority and has no say whatever in the party affairs, criticised the NC and Congress leadership, saying they are violating the democratic norms by openly campaigning for certain candidates seeking election to Panchayats. His argument was that the Panchayat elections are held on non-party basis, that the NC and Congress leaders are violating all democratic norms by campaigning in favour of candidates contesting the elections and that the local administration is also vitiating the electoral exercise by siding with the NC-Congress coalition government, which wants to capture as many Panchayats as possible.
How could the party president take on the NC and the Congress and accuse them of violating democratic norms? He, or for that matter no BJP leader in the state, has any moral authority to criticise the NC and the Congress. He and other BJP leaders lost their moral and political authority on April 13, when seven of its eleven legislators blackened its face beyond recognition; murdered democracy; vitiated the whole electoral exercise and offended its core constituency by voting in favour of the Congress and the NC candidates. The people described this act on the part of the BJP as an act of political treachery. Some described it as an act of political debauchery and others described it as an act of sedition. The fact of the matter is that the BJP has become unpopular to the extent that the people now hate to talk about the BJP – they dismiss the BJP leadership as a bunch of unscrupulous elements, bluffers, blackmailers and NC and the Congress agents in the BJP.
The state BJP president not only criticised the NC and the Congress on the ground that their leaders are interfering in the ongoing electoral exercise, but he also asked a few party activities belonging to the party’s youth wing to work for the complete integration of the state into India by defeating those working for the restoration of the pre-1953 position in the state. Who will listen to him and who will trust him? Nobody will trust any of the BJP leaders. On the contrary, the people would accuse the BJP leadership of again taking recourse to the politics of emotional blackmail in its desperate bid to recapture political space it has lost. People now know it full well that it is the same BJP that had in 1999 thought of granting “maximum possible autonomy to Kashmir and its adjoining areas.” People also know that it is the same BJP that extended its hand of friendship overlooking the fact that the latter’s single-point was, and continues to be, to annex J&K. It would be too much to say that the state BJP president is not aware of the party high command’s stand on autonomy. He, like the people of Jammu province, nay across the country, is aware of everything. And, yet he is indulging in exercises the people despise.
His statement that the BJP would launch a campaign against the state government, which has failed to deliver on any front, was all the more ludicrous and laughable. Where are the people with whose support he would launch the movement against the state government? There is none. The people have abandoned it and the BJP’s support-base is now confined only to Pandit Prem Nath Dogra Bhawan, Kachi Chowni, which also stands polluted due to the dirty politics the BJP has been playing, particularly since 1998, when it entered into an unholy alliance with pseudo-secular formations to fulfill its lust for power and pelf.
The moral of the story is that the BJP leadership may put in any amount of effort in order to recapture its lost political space but it would come out of the exercise minus everything. There should be no doubt it. Such is the atmosphere across the Jammu province. It has fallen from grace and it would take years and years to win back the trust of the people. Hold elections to the J&K Assembly today and you will see all the BJP candidates forfeiting their security deposits. The people would never forgive the BJP. This is the stark reality and the BJP leadership must recognize it.
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