Why the opinions of Jammu city do not reflect the sentiments of the entire division
The BJP claims that the results of the Union territory’s assembly polls are unrepresentative because ‘the Jammu heartland was missing from it’.
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Less than a month after the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader Ram Madhav raised a question about the mandate.
The National Conference government, Madhav told The Indian Express, was not “representative” of the entire Union territory because “the Jammu heartland was missing from it”.
In these first elections held in Jammu and Kashmir since August 2019, when New Delhi unilaterally abrogated the special provisions provided to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution, the National Conference secured a majority in the Union Territory, sweeping the Valley, while the BJP won the majority of the seats in Jammu province.
The BJP was unable to form a government on its own or with a coalition despite redrawing assembly constituencies by creating six additional constituencies in Jammu and only one in Kashmir, fielding proxy candidates in the Valley and empowering the lieutenant governor to nominate five representatives to the assembly.
Granting Scheduled Caste status to the Pahari community and Other Backward Classes status to some other communities also failed to translate into electoral gains. They failed to give the only Muslim-majority region a Hindu chief minister.
For the party, the Jammu results were indeed a silver lining. Ninety seats went to the polls in the Union territory. Of the 43 seats in...
