Aheli Moitra
Of course no one in Kashmir, or anywhere else, is surprised the Bharatiya Janata Party walked out of an alliance with its regional partner, the Jammu & Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party. The BJP has come to power through difficult alliances throughout the Indian Union and public disagreements have been a quintessential part of them all.
A peek into the neighbourhood gives an essence of the BJP’s troubled relationships with its alliance partners. Just a month ago we saw how the BJP’s regional partner in Assam, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) opposed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill. In early June, AGP President Atul Bora said, “We strongly oppose the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016…we will not continue with the alliance if the Bill is passed.” The AGP went a step further and met the other acrimonious but ideological ally of the BJP, the Shiv Sena, earlier in June to garner support to oppose the controversial Bill.
Tripura has also been mired in no less ambiguity for the national party. The BJP has found itself at loggerheads with its regional partner, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), over the selection of chairpersons to the Block Advisory Committees to the Autonomous District Councils. The State’s BJP Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb ‘warned’ IPFT leaders to “control their cadres and comply with the decision of the government or leave the government.”
This is very simple for the BJP to utter in Tripura given that it is not dependent on the IPFT to stay in power—the IPFT was given a measly 9 seats to contest, as an ally of the BJP, of which it won 8. BJP won 35 seats in the Tripura Legislative Assembly and the CPI (M) 16. There is no doubt on who the boss in Tripura currently is but the IPFT will not take that lying down given that they come from a tradition of activism for the rights of the indigenous peoples of Tripura.
Where else does the BJP have a regional alliance partner? Nagaland (also in Meghlaya and Manipur but let’s stick to Nagaland for now). Here, the BJP’s 12 seats make them almost an equal partner to the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party that has 18 seats in the Nagaland Legislative Assembly. The opposition Naga People’s Front has 26 seats. With the desperation for power giving way to skewed politics in Nagaland, it is anybody’s guess who power lies with.
The BJP has made great headway in all of these states thanks to the internal support it got from the regional parties/leaders that have long roots in the region. But now that the BJP is here, and continues to hold power in the centre, there is no reason why it cannot pull the plug on any of the states and create a situation of direct central rule. It will be commendable on its part not to give in to the lust for unforeseen power. But given what has happened in Kashmir, and given the rising dissent towards it from its own political allies, attributes of fair play cannot be taken as a given.
As its own bending of rules within the party has shown, it is more a party of ‘whatever works’ than the value based systemic change it promised to be.
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