Ahead of J&K leg, Rahul Yatra garners support in Jammu region

Congress leaders have informed the Bharat Jodo Yatra will reach Lakhanpur in the evening on January 19, and after a night halt there, will proceed from Kathua’s Hatli Morh next morning. It will again halt for the night at Chadwal. On the morning of January 21, it will start from Hiranagar to Duggar Haveli, and proceed from Vijaypur to Satwari on January 22, they added.

Rahul Gandhi will unfurl the tricolour on January 26, Republic Day, at a place en route his march to Kashmir, as they are likely to enter the Valley only around January 30, the Congress spokesperson has said.

Except for the BJP and its allies, or other like-minded parties, almost all mainstream political parties are likely to participate in the yatra. Congress spokesperson Dr Jahanzaid Siwal said that barring the BJP, the Ghulam Nabi Azad led Democratic Azad Party, the J&K Apni Party and the People’s Conference, they had written letters to 21 parties seeking their participation in the yatra. Almost all of them, including the NC, the PDP, Shiv Sena and CPI(M) have agreed to join the yatra, he said, adding that PDP supremo Mehbooba Mufti will herself join it in Kashmir.

Though leaders of some of the parties may be joining the yatra in Kashmir, given their support base across the UT, their workers will be joining it in Jammu as well. This is apart from the Congress mobilising its own party workers in every tehsil for participation in the yatra.

The presence of Dr Farooq Abdullah and Lal Singh in the yatra at Lakhanpur is going to give it an impressive start, especially in the plains of Jammu division, which are considered BJP bastions. Kathua also forms part of Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency, which has elected the Minister of State in the PMO, Dr Jitendra Singh, during 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Riding on massive public support in the plains of Jammu division, right from Udhampur and Rajouri’s Nowshera and Kalakote, all the way to Kathua district, the BJP had for the first time won 28 seats during the 2014 Assembly elections, and in coalition with the PDP, entered the corridors of power in the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state for the first time.

Though the BJP decimated the National Conference during the 2014 Assembly polls, with its sitting MP from Udhampur defeating the NC supported Congress candidate Vikramaditya Singh by a huge margin of 3.57 lakh votes during 2019 Lok Sabha polls, many in the saffron party admit that Dr Abdullah still holds charisma even in areas predominantly inhabited by Hindus.

Lal Singh, three-time MLA from Basohli and two-time MP from Udhampur, also enjoys considerable public support in Kathua district. It’s a different matter that as a Dogra Swabhiman Sanghathan candidate, he lost his deposit both from Jammu and Udhampur during the 2019 General Elections.

Singh has announced he will join the yatra along with 50,000 supporters, a claim which even his arch political rivals do not dispute, given his mass base in the district and the growing resentment among the public against local BJP leaders for their failure in redressing many of their grievances, even during the ongoing central rule.

Lal Singh had contested the 2014 Assembly polls on a BJP ticket, and later became a Cabinet minister in the Mehbooba Mufti-led coalition government. However, he had to resign from the Cabinet following controversy over his participation in a rally organised in support of a demand for a CBI inquiry by the accused, in the case of the gang rape and murder of a minor Bakerwali girl in Kathua’s Rasana forests.

Later, he floated his own Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan and contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in both Jammu and Udhampur constituencies. Though he lost the electoral battle at both the places, he still enjoys considerable influence among people in Kathua district.

The BJP is a divided house in the district, which is evident from the recent election of Lal Singh’s younger brother Rajinder Singh Babbi, an Independent councillor, as president of the Kathua Municipal Council. Though the BJP had 16 councillors in the 21 member council, Babbi defeated the saffron party nominee by a margin of eight votes.

Political observers here said that not just in Kathua, the BJP is facing the heat from the public even in Jammu district, over issues like regularisation of daily wagers in various departments, withholding of salary of migrant Kashmiri Pandit employees appointed under the PM’s special employment package, as well as the rehabilitation of the reserved category employees who hail from Jammu and were posted in Kashmir, who had returned to Jammu in the wake of targeted killings by militants in Kashmir.

These employees are currently sitting in protest at different places in Jammu for the past nearly 280 days, demanding that the administration should post them in Jammu until the security situation improves in Kashmir.

From daily wagers to migrant Kashmiri Pandit employees and Reserved Category Employees from Jammu serving in Kashmir, all protests are being held outside BJP offices, seeking the party’s intervention in getting their services regularised or salaries released. It’s almost as if the protesters have given up on their elected representatives.

Apart from complaints about bureaucrats being non-responsive to people, frequent cancellation of the selection process for various posts on grounds of alleged irregularities, and “outsiders” being awarded contracts for various trades like liquor vends and extraction of minor minerals from rivers across the UT, the people are also angry over the downgrading of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state to a Union Territory and taking away the constitutional protections earlier available to them in respect to land ownership and jobs.

In this potentially volatile situation, it is anybody’s guess what response the Bharat Jodo Yatra would get in Jammu and Kashmir.