A day after the consecration of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya, the BJP hit the road running in Jammu and Kashmir, where uncertainty continues over holding of elections. The party held the first meeting of its State Election Committee (SEC) in the Union Territory and on Tuesday, held a workshop on its country-wide ‘Gaon Chalo Abhiyan’.

The preparations are ostensibly for the Lok Sabha elections, with the BJP having won 2 of the UT’s 5 seats in 2019. The last time Assembly polls were held in J&K was 10 years ago, in 2014, and there is no clarity regarding when the next elections will be held.

“The 2024 Lok Sabha elections are a challenge for the BJP, as we not only aim to retain the seats we had won in the last elections, but also increase our tally,” BJP J&K president Ravinder Raina told partymen at the SEC meeting, going on to talk about the various departments set up for the purpose and the different responsibilities assigned to them.

The ‘Gaon Chalo Abhiyaan’ will kick off after January 26, and involve a BJP functionary spending at least 24 hours in a village to understand the issues of the people and to ensure that the target population is getting the benefit of public welfare schemes.

Apart from Raina, the SEC was attended by party general secretary (organisation) Ashok Koul, former deputy chief minister and J&K’s Lok Sabha cluster in-charge Dr Nirmal Singh, the party’s vice-president and Abhiyaan convener Pawan Khajuria, and its general secretary Dr Devinder Kumar Manyal.

Significantly, both the SEC meeting and ‘Gaon Chalo Abhiyaan’ workshop came five days after the BJP had held its core group meeting to discuss strategy for the coming Lok Sabha elections.

Sunil Sethi, the chief spokesperson of the J&K unit, said that apart from Jammu and Udhampur Lok Sabha constituencies, both in the Jammu province, the BJP expects to win the Anantnag seat in Kashmir.

While the BJP is expected to have an easy time in Jammu and Udhampur again, given that its major opponents National Conference (NC), PDP and Congress do not have any popular and widely recognisable face in the predominantly Hindu constituencies, the BJP’s hopes for Anantnag rest on the post-2022 delimitation exercise changing political equations in the seat, with the addition of Poonch and Rajouri.

The Congress once had a big Jammu leader in Ghulam Nabi Azad, but he has now floated his own Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP), which is expected to divide the Congress votes in both constituencies.

Meanwhile, after delimitation and their addition to Anantnag, both Poonch and Rajouri now have considerable Gujjar-Bakerwal, Pahari Muslim and Hindu voters, a sizable number of whom are BJP supporters.

Before 2022, nearly 90% of Anantnag’s electorate was Kashmiri Muslim, with Gujjar-Bakerwals making up only 10%. After the delimitation, the number of Gujjar-Bakerwal voters is estimated to have increased to 30-35%, besides a significant increase in the number of Paharis, including Hindus.

No mainstream political party in Kashmir has ever fielded a Gujjar candidate in the Lok Sabha elections so far. However, the buzz is that this time, the NC plans to field prominent Gujjar leader Mian Altaf from Anantnag, replacing its sitting MP Justice (retired) Masoodi. However, the PDP wants Anantnag for its president Mehbooba Mufti. Both the NC and the PDP are part of the Gupkar Alliance, formed to fight against abrogation of Article 370 and for the restoration of statehood to Jammu and Kashmir, apart from being members of the Opposition INDIA coalition.

The BJP has also invested heavily on tribals, nominating a member of the community to the Rajya Sabha, apart from putting its weight behind the community during successive incidents, whether it be in the aftermath of the gangrape and murder of the eight-year-old Bakerwal girl in Kathua’s Rasana forests in 2019; the killing of Army jawan Aurangzeb by militants; the killing of three boys from Rajouri in a fake encounter by some Army personnel in Shopian; and even the latest incident, in which three youths from Topa Pir village in Poonch died allegedly in Army custody.