Political Correspondent
JAMMU: It would be a misnomer to call the BJP’s wing in the State as BJP Jammu and Kashmir. It’s not. It is, in fact, BJP Jammu District or at the most erstwhile Jammu District. It is not really BJP Jammu province. Why is it so?
Why because 10 out of 26 BJP MLAs, including the nominated one, belong to Jammu District. Why because three out of seven members of the Legislative Council belong to Jammu city alone. Why because the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, who is from the BJP, also belongs to Jammu District, nay Jammu city. Why because two of the Cabinet Ministers out of seven and one Minister of State too belong to Jammu District. One of the Cabinet Ministers also hails from the erstwhile Jammu District. Interestingly, the Deputy Chief Minister, who won the election for the first time in 2014 after suffering three consecutive defeats in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, is also Jammu-city based. In other words, four out of seven BJP Cabinet Ministers are from Jammu District or the erstwhile Jammu district which used to return 13 members to the Assembly.
As for the remaining Jammu’s nine districts, they are represented in the Assembly by the remaining 17 MLAs, including an independent MLA who has rejoined the BJP for all practical purposes, and in the Council by one MLC. Two of them are Cabinet Ministers and two of them Ministers of State. The remaining seventh Cabinet Minister belongs to Kathua District. Significantly, Kashmir and Ladakh, which inflicted a crushing and ignominious defeat on the BJP in the last Assembly elections, are represented in the State Legislature by three BJP representatives. All the three are MLCs. Two belong to Kashmir and one to Ladakh. One of these MLCs was never a BJP man. His name appeared dramatically for the first time only on the eve of nominations to the Upper House, which obviously surprised many in the BJP. One of these three MLCs is a Cabinet Minister.
It’s no wonder then that resentment is brewing among the BJP workers all across Jammu province, barring Jammu District or erstwhile Jammu District. Only on Wednesday, many in the BJP, especially from the erstwhile Doda District, expressed shock over the recent elevation of two Ministers of State from the BJP to the status of Cabinet Minister — one from Ladakh and the other from Rajouri District. They dismissed these two ministers as “outsiders” and accused the party high command of dismissing the claims of “committed party representatives”.
Credible sources in the party on Thursday revealed that “BJP rank and file have criticised the decision of the party high command”, saying “the people of the erstwhile Doda District who returned four BJP members to the Assembly for the first time and who suffered because of militancy and fought for the national cause in the militant-infested area for years deserved a minimum of two berths in the Cabinet, but our claim has been rejected”. They said the party sent a wrong signal by ignoring the party loyalists and rewarding what they termed as “turncoats”. The decision would surely “demoralise nationalists in the communally sensitive area,” they asserted in anger.
But it is not only the party’s rank and file in the erstwhile Doda District who question the functioning of the party. Almost all in the remaining other districts have been also expressing the same view. They have started saying that the BJP is working against itself by not only adopting “anti-Jammu and pro-Valley” policies but also by “accommodating turncoats, rank opportunists and power brokers”.