Indian Kashmir elections

People of the occupied land came out in droves to stop the BJP’s political onslaught with their votes

The just concluded assembly election in Indian-occupied Kashmir has thrown up a hung house with the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) winning 28 seats and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of India 25 in a house of 87. With the second largest number of seats, the BJP can still lead a coalition government or be a part of it, if it can muster 19 more seats. However, neither the outgoing Jammu & Kashmir National Conference (J&KNC) with its 15 seats nor its coalition partner, the Indian National Congress (INC) with its 12 seats, is likely, at this juncture, to enter either a BJP-led or BJP-dependent coalition. But politics is known to have foisted the strangest of bed-fellows.

On the face of it, however, it appears as if the occupied people have succeeded by the whisker to thwart, for the time being, one more attempt by New Delhi to completely assimilate their land in the Indian Union, thanks largely to an unusually large turnout officially reported to be about 70 per cent. The occupied people usually resort to boycott or disruption of the poll process to undermine the legitimacy of such elections. However, sensing that a repeat of these tactics this time would enable the BJP to win enough seats to form a government on its own and then mange to get rid of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that had so far protected the occupied territory from being gobbled by India, the people of the occupied land came out of their houses seemingly in droves to stop the BJP’s political onslaught with their votes. Under Article 370, the Indian parliament is obliged to seek the concurrence of the Kashmir Assembly in all matters except defence, foreign affairs, finance and communication. Also, this Article can be removed from the Indian Constitution only if the Kashmir Assembly itself were to vote in favour of its elimination. That is what the BJP has promised to manage in its rallies during the Indian elections held earlier this year. One strongly hopes that the BJP’s designs will be defeated in light of the results of the Kashmir state elections.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 25^th,  2014.

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