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Journalism of Courage
BJP leader Chowdhary Zulfikar Ali, who lost from Budhal in the recent Assembly elections to the National Conference’s Chowdhary Javed Iqbal, on Monday said that people of the border Rajouri and Poonch districts should demand that they be carved out from Jammu and Kashmir into a separate Union Territory.
In remarks seen as targeted at the Kashmir province, Ali said: “Hamein kisi ke saath nahin rehna hai ab. Kyun rahengey inkey saath? Hamein jaddo-jahad shuru karni padegi, aur aaj yeh jaddo-jahad ka pehla din hai… Ab faisla kuchch na kuchch zaroor hoga aaney waley kuchch saalon mein (We don’t want to stay with anyone now. Why will we stay with them? We have to begin our fight, and today is the first day of this fight. This is the beginning and there will definitely be a decision in the next few years).”
The BJP lost all the five constituencies reserved for Scheduled Tribes in the Pir Panjal region, spread over the border Rajouri and Poonch districts. This was a setback to the party as it had hoped to make inroads here, with the Centre reserving seats for STs in J&K for the first time, and additionally extending the ST status to the Pahari ethnic group.
The eight Assembly seats in the two districts – five of these reserved for STs – voted either for the NC-Congress alliance (two for the NC, and one Congress) or their rebels who contested as Independents.
The ethnic group comprises largely people who speak a common Pahari language in these two districts, though belonging to different religions and having different cultures. The Paharis had been demanding ST status since 1991, after the then Central government provided ST reservation to Gujjars and Bakerwals among nearly a dozen other communities in government jobs and professional colleges. The Paharis argued that they lived in the same difficult terrain as inhabited by the Gujjars and Bakerwals, facing the same hardships as regards education, health, water, power and roads infrastructure.
However, the decision to give Paharis ST status had not gone down well with the Gujjars and Bakerwals, who comprise 43% and 41% of the population of Poonch and Rajouri, respectively, and feared a dilution of the benefits available to them. The apprehension was particularly acute regarding the elections as it was the first time there were ST-reserved seats in contention (a total of nine, of them five in the two Jammu border districts).
Both the Centre and J&K administration made repeated assurances that there would be no effect of the move on the reservation already available to the Gujjars and Bakerwals. However, this appears to have not cut much ice, and the two groups are seen to have united behind the NC-Congress alliance in the elections.
An influential Gujjar leader of the Pir Panjal region and an advocate by profession, Ali has won the Darhal Assembly seat, falling in Rajouri district, twice in the past as a PDP candidate. He served as a Cabinet minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government that lasted from 2014 to 2018, holding key portfolios like Food, Civil Supplies, Consumer Affairs and Tribal Affairs.
In 2020, Ali quit the PDP and joined the newly floated J&K Apni Party led by Altaf Bukhari and was made its founder vice-president. The Apni Party, however, failed to gain much ground in the District Development Council elections that it contested later that year.
Ahead of the 2024 Assembly elections, Ali quit the Apni Party and joined the BJP, which fielded him from Budhal.
Ali’s father Chowdhary Mohammad Hussain was also a prominent politician, having won the Darhal Assembly seat five times (twice as a Congress candidate, and three times for the NC) after resigning as a bureaucrat in 1967.
Zulfikar Ali is married into a political family, with his father-in-law Haji Buland Khana a three-time Gujjar MLA from Gulabgarh in adjoining Reasi district.
J&K BJP working president Sat Sharma said the party is against any demand seeking a division of J&K, calling it “against the interests of the people of the UT and the nation”. The party rather supports getting back the areas that once belonged to J&K and are lost to Pakistan, Sharma said. “So, 24 seats in the J&K Assembly continue to be kept for the people of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir,” he said.
NC Jammu province president Rattan Lal Gupta said his party was opposed to any division of J&K as it was not in national interest. Condemning the statement by Ali, Gupta asked the BJP to clarify its stand on the issue and initiate action against its leader if he spoke out of turn.
