Eye on 2019 Lok Sabha election, Amit Shah meets J&K cadre

Srinagar: BJP national president Amit Shah held wide-ranging talks with the party leadership in Jammu and Kashmir and other relevant people including prominent citizens and civil society leaders in Jammu on Saturday.

The exercise would continue on Sunday before Mr Shah, who is on a two-day visit to Jammu, leaves for the next leg of his 95-day countrywide tour during which he will strategise on ways to win the 2019 Lok Sabha election, with focus on clinching 120 Lok Sabha seats the party had lost in 2014.

The BJP president had separate meetings with the party legislators and members of the Jammu high court bar association, Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Jammu and prominent citizens to get feedback on the prevailing political situation and various other important issues. He also had a meeting with the five-member core group of the BJP’s state unit and was scheduled to hold one-on-one meetings with some party ministers in the PDP-BJP government.

These meetings took place against the backdrop of unending turbulence in the Kashmir Valley, the situation prevailing in the border-belt of Jammu region, the issue of permanent settlement of erstwhile West Pakistan refugees and tensions set off by the demand of local groups that Rohingya and Bangladeshi Muslim refugees living in shacks in and around the winter capital be banished.

Mr Shah is reported to have assured the state party leadership that all these issues and those which remain unsettled or crept up recently with ally PDP would be resolved as quickly as possible but in a non-confrontational way keeping in view interests of the party and the country.

The issues on which the allies have publicly differed with each other and created real or false fissures in their relations included the ways of dealing with the protests and stone-pelting incidents in the Valley. It was said that the BJP favours stern action against stone-pelters whereas PDP wants to apply ‘healing touch’ in the Valley to win over its alienated youth. The PDP leadership had reportedly conveyed to its BJP counterparts that ‘controversial’ statements from BJP camp like a minister’s asking for treating the stone-pelting youth “only with bullets” were making matters worse for it in Valley.

It is also an open secret now that the BJP wants equal share in proposed reshuffle in the ministry and change of some portfolios. The PDP had accused BJP of violating ‘coalition dharma’ and resented the way the latter behaved during a recently held election of new members to the state legislative council. The PDP had expressed resentment over the BJP’s taking three seats in MLC polls despite commitment of sharing two each.