Modi, Balakot, national security: BJP’s keys to winning Jammu

Bharatiya Janata Party has maintained huge leads in the two constituencies of Jammu and Udhampur while leading with a slender margin of nearly 10,000 votes in Ladakh

In restive Jammu and Kashmir, where the Lok Sabha election this year was marred by low voter turnout, the BJP was on course, rather impressively, to not only repeat its 2014 performance but also improve its vote share.

During the election campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had addressed three election rallies in Akhnoor, Vijaypur and Kathua—the Hindu heartland of Jammu region but didn’t address any in Kashmir. (AFP File Photo)

According to the results declared by the Election Commission on Friday at 10.05am, the BJP has retained three Lok Sabha seats of Jammu, Udhampur and Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir, which the party had won in the 2014 edition. The state sends six members from Baramulla, Srinagar, Anantnag, Ladakh, Udhampur and Jammu to the Lok Sabha.

This time around, the BJP easily retained Ladakh parliamentary constituency, unlike last time when its candidate and veteran Buddhist spiritual leader Thupstan Chhewang had won with a wafer-thin margin of just 36 votes over his nearest rival Ghulam Raza, a Congress rebel.

Undoubtedly, this time around “Modi-mania”, Balakot air-strike and national security—the three factors brightened poll prospects for the BJP in the Muslim majority state, especially in the Jammu region.

During the election campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had addressed three election rallies in Akhnoor, Vijaypur and Kathua—the Hindu heartland of Jammu region but didn’t address any in Kashmir.

“The trends amply reflect that people opted for the BJP in Jammu region. Decades of politics (Kashmir centric) reflected in the response of Jammu in 2008 (Amarnath land row). Militancy was already there. And, this is not something, which is happening right now. 2008 onwards, and especially from 2014, the BJP has a major say in the politics of Jammu and Kashmir,” Rekha Choudhary, a political analyst, said.

She said the nationalism at the national level comes from Jammu only, whose politics were in continuity with national politics.

“It’s not an exception. Whatever PM Modi says in the rest of India, one could see it here in this part as well. It was expected that the BJP will take away both the Jammu seats on its poll plank of national security and Balakot air-strike,” Choudhary, former head of Jammu University’s political science department, added.

Prof Muhammad Tajjudin, who teaches political sciences at Jammu University, said, “Though religion always had a major role in state politics and is visible in the trends this time around, the BJP successfully exploited the sentiment vis-à-vis national security”.

The National Conference and Congress didn’t field their candidates on the two Jammu seats to check the BJP but the trend suggest that traditional voters of the grand old party also drifted away to the ruling party at the Centre in Jammu, Tajjudin added.

Tajjudin said the BJP succeeded in convincing people in Jammu region about national security, terrorism, Pakistan and separatists.

“I feel that the BJP made J-K their selling point and marketed it very well across the nation and they also convince the people that they had no option than PM Modi to lead India. The opposition, including Congress, could not put up the real issues of unemployment, jobs, GST and demonetisation before the people and failed to win their confidence,” he added.

With national security being BJP’s poll plank, Hindu voters were consolidated in Jammu region and a clear polarisation was also visible on the ground.

Unlike the BJP’s star-campaigners like PM Modi, party president Amit Shah, home minister Rajnath Singh, defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Union minister Kiren Rijiju, no top leader of the Congress, except Ghulam Nabi Azad and Jyotiraditya Scindia, campaigned in Jammu and Kashmir.

The state with six Lok Sabha seats is currently under President’s rule after the PDP-BJP coalition broke down when the 25-member BJP pulled out of the alliance in June last year.

The 87-member state assembly was dissolved on November 21, 2018.

In the 2014 general elections, the BJP-PDP alliance had won three seats each - Udhampur, Ladakh and Jammu - while PDP had bagged Anantnag, Baramulla and the Srinagar seat. The Congress-National Conference coalition had got nothing.