It may not have won the most seats in Jammu and Kashmir but the BJP is busy now with political tic-tac-toe as it tries to decide which of the state’s two regional parties it should ally with to form the government.
Top BJP leaders like Arun Jaitley and Ram Madhav have said the party is for now keeping its options open. Privately, sources admit they are negotiating with both Omar Abdullah and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which is headed by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. While the PDP won the most seats -28, the BJP placed second with 25, and needs 19 more to form the government. It believes it has the support of seven independents.
After consulting its 25 newly-elected law-makers, the BJP is keen on an arrangement that would see one of its leaders as Chief Minister. That contender would be Jitendra Singh, currently a union minister. The BJP’s legislators feel that the election results – the best ever for the party in India’s only Muslim-majority state – signal that the BJP should try to be the senior partner in a coalition government. However, both regional parties want, at the very least, a rotational head of government so that a leader from each side would get a fixed term as Chief Minister.
If the BJP fails in its attempts to knit together a government, it is likely to pick Nirmal Singh as the Leader of the Opposition in the state legislature.
Mr Abdullah resigned as Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir yesterday after his party placed third in the elections. On Twitter last night, he emphatically denied that he is in talks with the BJP. However, Ram Madhav of the BJP told NDTV today that the party is talking to “all stake-holders” and included Mr Abdullah’s National Conference among them.
Mr Abdullah is seen by the BJP’s Kashmir legislators as a more viable partner than the PDP, whose stand on issues central to the state are the polar opposite of the BJP’s. For example, the BJP has said it would like to remove article 370, which grants Kashmir special constitutional status and the power to make its own laws; the PDP has described the ending of this provision as unacceptable, as has Mr Abdullah.
Both the BJP and the PDP are also factoring in the impact of a possible union on their supporters. The bJP made its gains in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region; the PDP got its numbers from the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley.
The BJP is trying, sources said, to frame the contours of a common agenda with both regional parties.
The PDP has the option of tying up with the Congress and independents, but that association could be fragile.