Ram Madhav attending a meeting in Srinagar on Thursday in the presence of two influential Shia leaders and a rebel PDP lawmaker has triggered fresh speculation.
Ram Madhav, BJP’s point person for Jammu and Kashmir, was here on Thursday, fuelling fresh speculation that he had come looking for the possibility of stitching up a new alliance, sans National Conference (NC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP), for the future Assembly elections in the state.
Recently, BJP supported Sajad Gani Lone’s protege Junaid Azim Mattoo to become the mayor of Srinagar city. BJP and Lone were able to tilt the balance of the councilors in favour of Mattoo despite all efforts by NC and PDP to get their proxies elected for the post of mayor and deputy mayor here.
BJP’s central leadership has been trying to forge a new alliance in Kashmir valley along with Lone and some rebel PDP lawmakers to elbow out the mainstream regional political parties in the state like NC and PDP from the Valley, especially from Srinagar.
Lone has been very happy that finally he was able to capture Srinagar Municipal Corporation, which has traditionally remained in the hands of NC. He even thanked BJP for landing support to its candidate to become Srinagar mayor. Lone and Mattoo feel that there is a new opening in Kashmir politics for young and influential political faces to take on traditional political parties like NC and PDP.
According to insiders, Madhav coming all the way to attend a meet at a city hotel on Thursday was more than just a victory bash for BJP and the Lone camp. The presence of influential Shia leaders Imran Raza Ansari and his uncle Abid Hussain Ansari along with another rebel PDP lawmaker Yasir Reshi shows that there is more to it than what meets an eye. According to sources close to Lone, negotiations are going on with different influential political faces in the state to form a grand alliance with the support of BJP to take on NC, Congress and PDP in the coming Assembly elections. Talks are also going on with many sitting lawmakers of NC, Congress and PDP and Madhav is playing an important role to nudge them closer to Lone, they said.
While Lone is emerging as the new “hope” of New Delhi in Kashmir to take NC and PDP head on, both the traditional regional parties are accusng New Delhi and its intelligence set-up of trying to poach their members to form a new political alliance.
A senior NC functionary alleged to The Sunday Guardian that the intelligence agencies and the Raj Bhavan were helping the rebels in their parties to cross over to the new alliance. “New Delhi is helping Lone in the same manner as they helpedthe late Mufti Muhammad Sayeed to form PDP with the help of intelligence agencies,” he claimed, alleging that such policies of BJP and Central government were eroding the faith of the Kashmiris in democracy and democratic norms. These regional parties had termed the recently concluded ULB elections as “sham” and dubbed them as an “intelligence operation of New Delhi in Kashmir”. They boycotted the elections and accused Governor Satya Pal Malik of making a “farce in the name of elections”. But the local polls were held by and large peacefully and turned out to be a grand success.
In a series of interviews, Malik had unfolded New Delhi’s new policy to deal with the Kashmir crisis and said that top priority would be given to provide space for the young and upright people in the Valley to fill the space provided by NC and PDP boycott.