J and K 2014 Assembly Polls : Battlelines Drawn

By Deepak Parvatiyar

November 1, 2014

Ever since the National Conference (NC) swept the Assembly polls in 1996 when electoral process had resumed after a decade of militancy, all subsequent state elections in Jammu & Kashmir have seen fractured mandates. The Congress since then invariably emerged as the ‘kingmaker’ in the state.

Can the Congress continue to be a kingmaker in this J & K election too?

The elections in the state are to be held in five phases between 23 November and 20 December. All the political parties have rejected the idea of any pre-poll alliances and have decided to go solo in polls. This means the Congress has parted ways with the NC yet again despite being a part of the NC-led coalition government in the state. Why so?

Congress-NC Ties: A Tale of Political Opportunism

Ins’t it rather prudent for the coalition partners of a government that lasted its full term to highlight their joint achievements in the fray? Yet, the Congress now opts to highlight the misgovernance of the NC and both the coalition partners are going to the people accusing each other of indulging in corruption! Both the parties are rather too keen to shift the blame on each other to counter the perceived anti-incumbency felt to an extent that they were unable to win a single seat in the state in the April-May Parliament elections. Or can we attribute the Congress’s decision to dump the NC to political expediency? After all, we all know that the party had taken a complete U-turn to dump its ruling coalition partner, the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party, and lent its support to the NC after the fractured verdict in 2008 state elections!
Yet in the past, the Congress had always leveraged the NC to play a domineering role in the state. History shows that it has off and on supported or dumped the NC to its convenience. This love-hate relationship continues and it is to be seen whether the two would tie the knots yet again in case of a hung assembly after the December polls in the state.

After all, post-poll bargaining prospects in case of a fractured verdict is indeed quite lucrative for the political players and has also benefitted many fringe players in the state politics too in the last 12 years in particular.

Congress has partnered with PDP too

Consider the 2002 and 2008 elections. Didn’t the fractured verdict then give ample scope to horse trading?

In 2002, the NC had emerged as the single largest party and claimed support of 10 of the total 15 Independent MLAs. However, two CPI (M) MLAs along with five Independents even formed the Democratic People’s Forum to announce their support to any non-NC party to form the government!  Political bargaining then went on for about two weeks before an agreement was finally reached between the Congress and the PDP to form the government with the support of four MLAs of the J&K Panthers’ Party and Independents!

In 2008, when the NC emerged as largest party winning 28 seats out of 87 assembly seats, the Congress sided with it and helped it form the government with the support of its 17 MLAs.

November 2014 J & K Assembly Elections: Altered Scenario

Yet, the 2014 state elections are different in many ways. They are being held after the unprecedented floods brought misery to millions in the state and cross-border firing aroused sentiments particularly in the Jammu region. The rise of Narendra Modi at the Centre too is a crucial factor. Unlike earlier Prime Ministers, he has spent considerable time in the state after taking charge and even spent his Diwali with the flood victims in the Valley. Strategists say that such out-of-the-box approach even made the Kashmir separatists clueless on how to react to Modi’s moves. The All Party Hurriyat Conference though, like in the past, has again given a boycott call to the elections.

Riding the Modi wave, while the BJP has set a goal of winning 44+ seats in the state, it even talks of a Hindu CM for the state – which goes well with the voters of Jammu and Ladakh regions.

If the last general elections in the state are any indication, with victory in three of the six constituencies, the BJP seems to have emerged as a formidable force in the state and its prospects seem buoyed also because of the palpable disunity of the ‘secular’ parties, which could help it in about two dozen non-Muslim dominated assembly constituencies.

Analysts feel the biggest challenge to the BJP this time is from the PDP. In the last general elections the latter had swept the Valley winning all the three seats there. It had then polled a little over 20 per cent of the total votes polled and the NC a paltry 11.1 per cent. Now it hopes to reap the benefits of the anti-incumbency factor in the Valley which accounts for 46 assembly seats (Jammu has 37 assembly segments while Laddakh, 4).

The NC has reverted to the poll plank of greater autonomy (which had backfired in 2002). The PDP for “nation-state” status and “supra-state measures”. But how these issues fare before the nationalistic agenda of the BJP is to be seen. Moreover, will the NC (which was a constituent of the Atal Behari Vajpayee government) side with the BJP in case of a fractured mandate and in a scenario where the BJP emerges as the single largest party? Politics is the art of the possible.