Winning a crown full of thorns

Two weeks after the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election results were declared, the State is nowhere near forming a government. The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has emerged the single largest with 28 seats, but is struggling to make a justifiable deal with the second largest party, the BJP, which has won 25 out of the total 87 seats, and offered support. Talks are on between the leaders of the two parties and reportedly, the senior BJP leader LK Advani, who has a good equation with PDP chief Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, is in touch with him.

But directly proportionate to the simple maths and the BJP’s offer of support are the complexities involved in explaining to the PDP’s core constituency, the Valley’s Muslims, a partnership with the BJP. This too, after they had clearly rejected the BJP, assuring that 33 of its 34 contestants in the Valley lost their deposits. But the BJP has cause to cheer; it bagged the highest votes at 23 per cent, followed by the PDP (22.7 per cent). And its tally has gone up from 11 seats in 2008 to 25 in the present Assembly.

In more ways than one, right from Independence, Jammu and Kashmir — particularly the Kashmir Valley — has been a troubled and troublesome State. The fractured verdict of this Assembly election, where votes have been cast distinctly along regional and religious lines, has thrown up many challenges for government formation. One thing that was evident well before the election was that the National Conference would not return to power, just as it was clear in the General Election that the Congress-led UPA would be trounced. Emboldened by the convincing manner in which it swept the Lok Sabha polls, the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine had launched their ‘Mission 44 Plus’ electoral campaign for the State’s 87 seats.

This confidence was based on the calculation that as the BJP had swept Jammu in the Lok Sabha polls, it could aim for all 37 seats in Jammu, four from Ladakh and a few in the Valley. But the BJP ended up with only 25 seats, all from Jammu, and not one in Buddhist Ladakh. Here, the Congress, which was drubbed by the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls, clawed back, winning three of the four seats. One of its MLAs from Ladakh is a Muslim, he won from Kargil; the BJP had bagged the Kargil Lok Sabha constituency in May.

Even though a PDP-BJP coalition government seems imminent, the two parties make the oddest of couples. For a coalition to work, the parties involved need a basic ideological fit. But here J&K will have two strange bedfellows; the BJP wants the abrogation of Article 370 which, however weakened, is non-negotiable for the Valley’s Muslims. The PDP wants dialogue with the separatists for whom the BJP has little time or sympathy, and rightly so. And the two parties have diametrically opposing views on the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).

So the PDP’s biggest dilemma in stitching up a coalition with the BJP is explaining its compulsions to its core constituency — after all, 25 of its 28 seats came from the Valley’s Muslims — which summarily rejected the BJP. The PDP’s three other seats came from the Muslim-majority areas of Jammu. Srinagar has helped the PDP the most. It managed to gain five seats from NC, which came third with 15 seats (11 from the Valley and four from Jammu), leaving 12 for the Congress.

For a stable government, the PDP has little choice but to shake hands with the BJP. And although it is in the enviable position of having many suitors, an alliance with the Congress will require support from four Independents and lead to an unstable government.

To further muddy the waters, the outgoing chief minister and NC leader Omar Abdullah has also offered support to the PDP. But accepting this support would be even more bizarre, as it would be like Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and the Left parties forming a coalition government in West Bengal! Omar knows this and knows even better that the PDP rejecting his NC for the BJP gives him a brownie point. He can tell the Valley’s Muslims: “Look you rejected the BJP and ensured 33 of their candidates lost their deposit. But the PDP has now embraced the same BJP!”

The best example of the kind of games politicians play lay in Omar also offering NC support to the BJP! Here too the maths is the same: 25+15 totalling 40, as in the case of a PDP, Congress handshake!

Right now, the PDP senior leadership is going through the exercise of consulting and convincing its MLAs, quite a few of whom are opposed to a pact with the BJP saying their voters would see this union as a betrayal of their trust.

Ultimately, when the PDP and the BJP form a coalition government in the State after ironing out their differences on contentious issues such as Article 370, AFSPA, and speedy dialogue with Pakistan, another demand of the PDP, it will be based on a common minimum programme. It’ll be interesting to see the contours, shades, stated positions, and much more, the unstated ones, of such an agreement!

With a straight face, the Mufti, who has demanded chief ministership for six years, will have to tell the people that in the interest of democracy, and of course for that elusive goal called “development”, and to keep away “corrupt” parties such as the NC and Congress, his party has embraced the BJP.

But if, for some reason, the PDP-Congress combo comes to power, the script will be totally different. The Valley’s Muslims will be assured that the PDP leadership had decided to embrace the Congress in order to keep out “communal and divisive forces”. Either way, the State is likely to see a government that will reiterate the sharp regional and religious divide of the Kashmir and Jammu regions. Such are the complexities of democracy! But time is running out; the term of the present Assembly ends on January 18.

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