It seems the PDP and its leadership were taken unawares by the sudden decision of their alliance partner, the BJP, to yank support from the Mehbooba Mufti-led coalition government. Hence, the move is seen by Kashmir watchers as a huge embarrassment to the chief minister as well as her party.
But, it is also a fact that signs that the partnership between what her father Mufti Muhammad Sayeed had termed as ‘North Pole and South Pole’ was falling apart before completion of the stipulated six-year term of the government were there for months.
The scepticism was only strengthened after the two parties publicly took sharply divergent paths on various issues, the latest being extending a conditional cease-fire beyond Ramzan and resuming anti militancy operations in the Valley. The rift between the two sides came to the fore earlier, also when the chief minister turned down the BJP’s demand that the probe into the gang-rape and murder of an 8-year-old nomad girl inside a temple in the state’s Kathua district in January this year be handed over to the CBI.
Two BJP ministers had even participated in a rally held in support of the accused. They were subsequently made to quit in the run up to a reshuffle in the Council of Ministers but reportedly continued to be encouraged by the BJP leadership.
While announcing the BJP’s decision in New Delhi, the party national secretary general Ram Madhav said, “We have taken a decision, it is untenable for BJP to continue in alliance with PDP in Jammu and Kashmir, hence we are withdrawing.”
Military campaign
Sources in the PDP said that after deciding not to extend the conditional ceasefire announced by the centre for the Islamic fasting month of Ramzan, the Modi government has decided to launch a tough military campaign against separatist militants in the restive state and give a ‘free hand’ to security forces to deal with the situation. The PDP did not agree to it which triggered differences that soon reached the point of no return. Yet, the PDP had not expected its coalition partner to call it a day so soon.
The chief minister and the PDP had also pleaded for extending the Ramzan truce beyond Eid-ul-Fitr to pave the way for holding talks with the separatists which was ignored by the centre, the sources said.
However, the sections of security forces and also senior Army commanders were against extending Ramzan cease-fire and even eager not only to resume but also bump up anti militant and anti terror operations across the Kashmir Valley at earliest. They are planning to launch ‘Operation All Out II’ against the militants as during the first phase of the campaign more than three hundred militants including several top commanders were killed in 2017 and during the first four and half months of 2018.
Local watchers see in the BJP’s decision also an attempt to charm its constituency as the party was being openly accused of surrendering to power lust the interests of Jammu from where it won almost all the 25 seats in the 2014 assembly election. On the other hand, the PDP’s support base is the Kashmir Valley from where it won most of the 28 seats in its tally. This support base has eroded over the past three years because it choose the saffron party as its ally. The unending killings in the Valley have also hit its acceptability.
Open differences
Ever since the two parties joined hands to form a government in 2015, they have publicly differed on the issues including Article 370 of the Constitution which guarantees special status to J&K within the Indian Union. While the PDP would repeatedly say it will never allow dilution of this provision, the BJP would publicly vow that abrogation of Article 370 and its upshot, including Article 35A, are ‘core agenda’ of the party and that it has never left and abandoned it. “Only for the purposes of running a coalition government in the state, the party had decided not to press for abrogation of Article 370 while in government but in no way has it abandoned this agenda,” the party would say.
Mehbooba Mufti took over as chief minister of the restive state after a delay of nearly three months following the death of her father and PDP patron Mufti Mohammed Sayeed in January 2015. The reluctance to sit on the hot seat was projected by her party as testimony to her not being ‘power hungry’ or an opportunist daughter. In fact, she herself went on record to say that she wanted certain J&K-specific “confidence building measures” before she could actually give a serious thought to stepping into her father’s shoes. She also insisted on unspecified concessions and incentives as prerequisites for government formation.
But, finally, she held a ‘broader reconciliation’ meeting with Prime Minister, Narendra Mode in New Delhi in March 2016 and returned home to proclaim her renewed fondness for the BJP which in turn asserted the one-on-one meeting between the two was an affirmation of mutual understanding. No CBMs, concessions or incentives have been announced by the centre.
Seemingly, the 58-year-old Kashmiri leader whose rise was inextricably linked to her promoting an approach of “soft separatism”, favouring talks with separatists and Pakistan and even once choosing to mourn the deaths of militants at their homes chose for herself a tough path to tread upon by going with the ideologically-divergent BJP perceived also as being anti-Muslim by a majority of the voters who strongly favoured the PDP for its pro-Kashmiri stance in the elections to pre-empt a sort of coup d'état. At that point in time, it was reported that internal strife and inclination among some of the PDP lawmakers to form government with the BJP after bypassing rather swindling their leader prompted her to climb-down from her earlier stand and give in to the BJP.
However, she termed it a preference of her soft options and reaffirmed that, like her father, she engaged the new reality of the country and chose for herself the role of a practitioner of unpopular politics who would swim against the tide in the ‘best interest’ of J&K and its people.
Tough task
Swimming against the tide was not an easy task for her. Not only did she find it difficult to sell PDP’s “unnatural alliance” with the saffron party which was openly accused of being ‘anti-Kashmiri, anti-Muslim’ even by her own senior party colleague Tariq Hameed Karra – who later quit Parliament as well as the primary membership of the PDP in protest – proving herself especially in matters of governance and come up the hard way was like getting blood out of a stone.
Soon the chief minister and her party found themselves in a very difficult situation particularly in its bastion of south Kashmir where people started openly speaking against them, mainly over cobbling up an alliance with the BJP. The killing of Burhan Wani in July 2016 was merely a trigger for venting anger that was brewing in the Valley.
Mehbooba Mufti’s image as a politician has suffered over the past two years. Also, despite having a track record of her own as an organisational leader she, unlike her father, lacked an effective and strong leadership in the sphere of administration. Her repeated attempts to reconnect with people failed mainly because of unending violence.