One heard the odd rumour about the BJP planning to pull out of the government, but it is the abruptness of it that has taken many, including me, by surprise. But it must be Mehbooba Mufti, under whose feet the BJP pulled the rug from, who must be feeling angry and perhaps humiliated.
Just to be clear, the National Conference all along the term of this government, while opposing its policies and criticising it for the several compromises it made, wanted it to finish its full term.
In our meeting with the Prime Minister, we only asked him to help strengthen the democratic structures in the Valley. But in the end, Governor’s Rule was inevitable.
Though they tried to bring together the ‘North Pole and South Pole’, the fact is that the two poles are placed opposite each other and will always remain so. From the outset, given the divergent ideologies of the two parties, it was quite clear that the alliance would always remain on shaky grounds. People never accepted it.
From the jubilation that one has seen across south Kashmir, including in CM’s own constituency Anantnag, it is clear that the anger of the masses was against this alliance.
The BJP-PDP alliance has eroded space for mainstream politics in Kashmir and caused unprecedented anger in the Valley, but with the alliance coming to an end it is clear that half of the anger among the people is gone.
What we need to do now, as political parties, is to approach our people with a friendly approach and try to recreate space for dialogue and politics. We now need to win hearts and minds of people.
But there is still a lot of uncertainty in the air. To get a government up and running in the state, to avoid an abuse of democracy, we now hope that the Governor would take the next logical step — of dissolving the Assembly.
Not doing so would give rise to a lot of ugly possibilities, including horse-trading. Some signals that have come from senior BJP state leaders are quite worrying. What we need now is dissolution of the state Assembly and a cooling period of around six months to help us get back to people and build enough ground for elections to take place.
With the seniority and experience of Governor NN Vohra, we hope he goes by the book and presides over the state as impartially as he has done over the last nearly one decade.
The National Conference has been working tirelessly to get back to the people. We have been touring Ladakh, Kashmir and Jammu to win back the trust of the people. In 2014, we accepted the mandate of the people who clearly did not want us to form the government. In the coming elections, we’re sure of getting back to power on our own.
(Nasir Aslam Wani is the provincial president of National Conference and the former home minister of Jammu and Kashmir. Views are personal)
As told to Suhas Munshi
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