Ram Madhav didn’t even call CM, says PDP. BJP source claims Rajnath had informed Mehbooba of decision on Sunday.
New Delhi: With the BJP having pulled out of the Jammu and Kashmir government, the party and its once coalition partner in the state, the PDP, Tuesday contradicted each other on the sequence of events leading up to their bitter separation.
The PDP claimed that the BJP’s point person on J&K, Ram Madhav, didn’t even speak to outgoing chief minister Mehbooba Mufti before pulling the plug on the coalition.
“Ram Madhav called the chief minister this morning but she was away and couldn’t take his call. So, no, we had no formal indication that the BJP was pulling out of the government,” senior PDP leader Naeem Akhtar told ThePrint.
Sources in the BJP, however, said Union home minister Rajnath Singh had called Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday and informed her of his party’s decision to break the alliance. “Mufti had told Singh that BJP should do as it feels but if the party goes ahead, any political alliance with the BJP would not be possible in the future,” said a highly-placed source.
While the PDP says it wasn’t formally informed, it, however, admits that it isn’t entirely surprised by the BJP’s decision.
Akhtar said the “signs had been there for about a couple of months”, especially when the BJP accused the PDP of “not doing enough” to crack down on terrorism in the Valley.
“So, yes, we were not formally told, but let me add that we are not shocked. The end of an alliance between the North Pole and the South Pole should not shock anyone,” he added.
“There is no regret. We are leaving on a high. There are no emotions in politics. We will take our own course of action. For now, we are resigning,” he said.
Distrust on both sides
The two sides, however, agreed that there had been distrust between them.
Sources in the BJP said there was a growing fear in the party that the PDP was allegedly allowing terrorism to grow in the state. A senior BJP leader said the party’s J&K leaders were troubled by the alliance. “The cadre was unhappy. The PDP ideology wasn’t in tune with that of the BJP,” the leader added.
The Centre, the BJP leader said, was briefed about the loss of support within the state not just for the BJP but also for the PDP. “People don’t trust both parties and it seems impossible to win seats in the Lok Sabha elections. Knowing that the party has no chance, it was better to exit the alliance prematurely and think of ways to save Kashmir,” the leader said.
The PDP says that while it too had wanted to exit the coalition government on several occasions, it decided against it as it did not want to be the “first to withdraw from the alliance”.
A PDP source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the party had made the decision when Mehbooba’s father, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, pushed for an alliance with the BJP after the December 2014 elections.
“If we had withdrawn, and trust me, there were several occasions over the last two-and-a-half years when we felt so hamstrung but swallowed our own anger, we would have been labelled ‘untrustworthy,’ or ‘disloyal’,” the PDP source said, adding that the party had decided it would never give an opportunity for the opposition to blame it on the issue.
Akhtar, the senior PDP leader, added, “We are satisfied that we had set out on a course to resolve Jammu and Kashmir politically through reconciliation. We did everything from dialogue to interlocutor to ceasefire… Ultimately, the BJP found to do something more.”
The ceasefire conundrum
With the BJP parting ways with the PDP after the Centre announced that it would not extend the Ramzan ceasefire, the spectre of the announcement hung over proceedings Tuesday.
Outgoing chief minister Mehbooba Mufti alluded to this during her press conference.
“We wanted to integrate the state’s regions — Jammu, Ladakh and the Kashmir Valley — and we did that. We were instrumental in letting off 11,000 Kashmiri youth who had unnecessary FIRs lodged against them. We believe that dialogue is the only answer so we pushed for a ceasefire during Ramzan,” she said.
“But if the BJP wants a muscular policy, then that is not the answer,” she added.
Hours earlier, state BJP president Ravinder Raina had said, “There is no ‘cease’, there is only fire in the state.” He was referring to the continuing militancy in the state during the “cessation of operations” during Ramzan.
Sources in the BJP said NSA chief Ajit Doval had met BJP president Amit Shah Tuesday morning, ahead of Shah’s meeting with BJP ministers and leaders from Jammu and Kashmir.
The Doval-Shah meeting, sources said, was to chalk out operational logistics in the state once the BJP withdrew support.
With inputs from Rahiba Parveen