To regain upper hand, BJP now wants its J&K leaders to raise pitch for statehood

During recent meeting in Jammu, BJP general secretary P. Muralidhar Rao is said to have told senior leaders they must ensure credit for return to full statehood goes only to BJP.

BJP national general secretary P Muralidhar Rao | Photo: @PMuralidharRao | Twitter

New Delhi: In what could be seen as a sign that the Narendra Modi government is contemplating giving statehood back to Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP is learnt to have asked the local leadership to raise the pitch for return of full-state status.

As a result of this demand, sources in the party told ThePrint, J&K could even see assembly elections later this year.

At a recent party meeting in Jammu, the sources said, BJP general secretary P. Muralidhar Rao told leaders from the region to make a noisy and concerted demand to return its statehood to J&K, which became a union territory on 31 October 2019. The new status followed the Modi government’s 5 August decision to scrap Article 370 of the Constitution that granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and bifurcate it into two union territories of J&K and Ladakh.

During a closed-door interaction with the party’s senior functionaries and leaders, Rao said the party cadre must ensure that credit for return to full statehood, once granted, went to the BJP and not any other party.

The RSS pracharak-turned-BJP leader, however, did not lay down any time-frame on when the central government could decide to turn the clock back and declare J&K, excluding the union territory of Ladakh, a state again.

“There is no cause for worry. Everyone knows the decision to scrap Article 370 was taken in national interest. As for statehood, it will happen at the right time,” a senior BJP leader present in the meeting told ThePrint.

A few others who attended the meeting, however, said Rao dropped enough hints that the decision would be taken as soon as the situation allowed it.

Jammu not happy with continued restrictions

Rao’s statement also signifies a grudging acceptance of the fact that many in the Hindu-majority Jammu are showing signs of becoming restive with continuing curbs on them along with the Kashmir region.

The sources told ThePrint that Rao, who also sought inputs from independent Jammu-based intellectuals and civil society leaders about the situation in the aftermath of the Modi government’s August decision to scrap the contentious clauses of Article 370, was told by some that unless the central government took steps to deal with the festering feeling that Jammu may have been short-changed in the exercise, the party could also suffer politically.

It was then that Rao, while indicating to the Jammu leadership that return to full statehood could happen soon, asked them to aggressively ask for it.

This, he is learnt to have told his party colleagues in Jammu, will ensure that the party gains when the decision is taken.

Since November-end, even as several frontline opposition leaders, including three former chief ministers of the erstwhile state, continue to be in detention, residents of Jammu have started questioning the promised benefits of the Article 370 move that have so far eluded the region.

Local residents have also sought a domicile law to prevent their jobs and land from going to “outsiders”.