Social media is flooded with questions as to why Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was celebrating even when party has lost half of the seats in District Development Council (DDC) polls in Jammu division – said to be the stronghold of the party where it had won both the Parliamentary seats in 2019 polls.
The party besides not doing well in the Muslim dominated areas also lost some seats to Panthers Party and independents in Hindu majority areas of Jammu.
On the other hand Guplar Alliance or the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) led by Farooq Abdullah was able to bag 112 seats in entire Jammu and Kashmir.
While the BJP had attacked the Guplar Alliance by calling it “anti-national” and “against development of J&K”, the saffron party had also claimed earlier the DDC polls will be a referendum of people on abrogation of Article 370. President of J&K unit of the party Ravinder Raina had gone a step further and said that people of the UT will teach a lesson to the “Gupkar Gang”.
Soon after the results, senior leaders of BJP including Union Minister Anurag Thakur and others started giving statements on national televisions that it was a victory of BJP. The reason why the result was said to be in favour of BJP by its leaders was that it bagged 75 seats and became the single largest party.
However the party also had to portray to the country that abrogation of Article 370 was a decision that has been accepted by the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
However given the fact that PAGD was an alliance of mainstream Kashmir based parties, they had fielded, on most seats, single candidate who represented the pre-poll alliance. PAGD bagged a whopping 112 seats and more than 30 seats in Jammu region alone. The BJP was able to win only three seats in Kashmir region.
BJP won 72 seats in Jammu region out of total 140 even then the party was content enough to celebrate.
Interestingly, PAGD candidates had alleged that they were not allowed to campaign for the DDC polls by the administration on the pretext of their security but the BJP leaders campaigned freely in Kashmir valley for the polls.
A senior leader of BJP told JK Newsline that Ravinder Raina who is the chief of J&K unit of BJP must be held responsible for the fact that PAGD – a Kashmir based alliance – won so many seats in the region while “we could not perform well even in our stronghold Jammu”.
