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Journalism of Courage
The BJP’s Jammu North candidate and state vice-president Sham Lal Sharma has appealed to voters in the Jammu division, where 24 constituencies are going to polls on October 1, to elect the party’s candidates so that the Union Territory can have its first CM from the Hindu Dogra community.
At a public meeting at Domana earlier this week, Sharma told voters, “It is now or never to make a Dogra Hindu Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. If a Muslim can be the CM of Maharashtra (A R Antulay) despite having just a small population, why can’t a Hindu be the CM in J&K? We have a 32% population here.”
This is an attempt to polarise Hindus from the plains of Jammu and consolidate them to ensure the BJP wins as many seats from the Jammu division that has 43 Assembly seats and gets the chance to be in a position to have a say in government formation. As per the 2011 Census, there are 68.8% Muslims in J&K, the majority in the Kashmir Valley and 28.8% Hindus of whom the majority live in Jammu.
The appeal also plays on the Hindu Dogra community’s nostalgia about the time — 1846 to 1947 — when it ruled the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The idea has its roots in the 2002 Assembly polls that threw up a hung verdict, with the National Conference (NC) coming down to 28 seats from 57 in the then 87-member Assembly. The Congress won 20 seats and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) bagged 16, forming a coalition government along with smaller outfits such as the Panthers Party, the CPI(M), and some Independent MLAs.
The government failed to complete its term and the next Assembly polls in 2008 also threw up a hung mandate, forcing the NC and the Congress to form a post-poll coalition and form the government.
With the political forces in the Valley increasingly fractured, politicians from Jammu increasingly came to believe that the plains could get their own CM. Ahead of the elections in 2014 elections, Sharma who was then the Congress MLA from Akhnoor quit as the state Cabinet minister alleging discrimination in the regularisation of daily wagers in Jammu in the Department of Public Health Engineering (now the Jal Shakti Ministry) who were paid Rs 900-1,500 a month. Of the 11,984 daily wage workers regularised since 1994, only 855 were from the Jammu division, he said.
In the elections that year, the BJP won 25 seats from Jammu after Hindu voters consolidated behind the party and paved the way for it to come to power with the PDP. Dependent on voters from the plains of Jammu, the BJP has said Jammu should have a say in the formation of the new J&K government and if it wins a full majority, the CM elected will be from the region. However, it has not clarified which community the CM will be from.
From its ascension to the Union of India in 1947 till March 5, 1965, Jammu and Kashmir used to have the office of a Prime Minister. Except for Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan, the first PM of J&K, the rest were from the Valley: Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, Khawaja Shamsuddin, and Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq.
The nomenclature of the office of Prime Minister was then changed to Chief Minister and the Sadar-e-Riyast (president) to Governor. Of all its CMs, only Ghulam Nabi Azad, from Doda district, has been from Jammu. Azad became the CM as the Congress and the PDP had struck a deal to share the top job. After Mufti Mohammad Sayeed stepped down in November 2005, Azad was elected CM as most of the Congress’s MLAs were from the Jammu division.
