SAFFRON WALKOVER
With the Opposition locked up, the BJP plans a big surge in the Valley’s block election
Asha Parveen, 40, is at the bustling Srinagar headquarters of the BJP. The Narbal village sarpanch is a new entrant into the saffron party. She quit the Congress in September and now lives with her family at a private hotel in Srinagar’s Badamibagh cantonment area. After the panchayat election last December, Parveen says she didn’t venture much into the village as her security cover had been withdrawn.
A 25year political veteran, Parveen has survived two militant attacks on her life, but “with my two personal security guards taken away, my life was in peril”, she says. The former Mahila Congress president of
Budgam was last month also stripped of her ‘migrant’ status, which meant the family lost the Rs 9,000 monthly allowance and right to rations (the entitlement is for those who migrated from their homes after militancy erupted in 1989). But she admits her security and migrant status will be restored after switching allegiances. “The Congress and National Conference have been wiped out. Yahan ke logon ka kaam bhi ho jayega, aur mera bi kaam ho jayega (Here [in the BJP], people’s interests will be served, and also mine),” Parveen says with a wry smile.
She is part of the panch/ sarpanch electoral college that the BJP will be counting on in the October 24 block development council (BDC) chairperson poll (the second tier of the panchayati raj system) to wrest control of the local governance system in the Valley. The party has been so bold as to put up 120 candidates in 134 blocks where it has not won a parliamentary or assembly poll ever.
A total of 1,065 nominations (396 from the Valley and the rest from Jammu and Ladakh) have been filed for the 316 blocks in Jammu and Kashmir. Twentyseven chairpersons, including 15 from the BJP, have already been elected unopposed, according to data from the office of the J&K chief electoral officer. In south Kashmir’s Shopian, for instance, elections will be held in only two blocks out of 10 as six chairpersons from the BJP have already been elected unopposed (the one block reserved for women has got no nomination).
Like the panchayat elections in December last year, none of the opposition parties is contesting this time either. After the panchayat election, 12,054 panch and sarpanch seats (61 per cent) were still lying vacant in the Valley districts, according to J&K electoral office data. In the polls, 699 panchayat halqas (area representing a village or contiguous villages) saw no polling as a single candidate won unopposed. Predictably, the BJP emerged on top with 1,267 elected representatives. In the past few months, according to BJP spokesperson and Tral village sarpanch Altaf Thakur, 300 more panchs and sarpanchs have been admitted into the party fold, taking the BJP’s total strength to over 1,500. The major political parties, including the National Conference (NC), the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Congress, are boycotting the BDC polls as their leaders and workers have been under detention since August 5. This includes three former chief ministers—Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti.
Lok Sabha MP from the NC, retired Justice Hasnain Masoodi, says the whole electoral process “is a sham exercise. It has never happened in a democracy. All the political parties have been physically chased away, even as the BJP is allowed to contest the election...this is not an election, this is more of a selection”.
State BJP spokesperson Ashwani Chrungoo disagrees. “These (political parties) have a second, third tier of leadership, who can contest elections. Where are they?” he asks. “We will not allow these theatrics. After the BDC elections, we will get serious about the district development council poll,” says Chrungoo, who calls the panchayat election a first step in the setting up of a new political order in J&K.
The J&K government apparatus is equally focused on this. Unlike in the past, panchs and sarpanchs have been empowered by allotting them considerable funds as well as a devolution of power under the Panchayati Raj Act. This has generated a perception that a parallel power structure is being created to neutralise the former legislators, who till now exclusively held the reins of their constituencies. A top J&K government bureaucrat, who preferred to stay anonymous, does not deny this point when he talks of the government’s zeal in strengthening local governance institutions.
But secretary, rural development department and panchayati raj, Sheetal Nanda, insists they are only following the provisions of the Panchayati Raj Act. So far, the government has cleared a tranche of funds amounting to Rs 1,000 crore to 4,483 panchayats for carrying out public works; Rs 700 crore more will be released shortly. This means a panchayat will be spending an average Rs 3050 lakh in its village. “It is not a substitute for a legislative assembly, but the panchayats will be able to address local issues. An elected BDC body is vital here, for monitoring and coordination,” says Nanda.