At a time when the Congress and National Conference look all set to form the next coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir, there is one interesting aspect of this year’s results that has gone unnoticed.

While they may not have got many seats, for the first time in the electoral history of Kashmir, the national political parties have made serious inroads into the ‘forbidden’ Valley, securing 16.99 per cent of the votes.

This time, 22 national political parties entered the electoral process in Kashmir, contesting from all the 46 Assembly seats. Even the smaller national political parties, for the first time, managed to secure substantial votes.

In fact, the BJP that made the Amarnath land transfer row and “discrimination towards Jammu Hindus” a major

issues in the elections — riding on this to sweep the seats in Jammu — secured more than 16,000 votes in the Valley besides coming in third at Pahalgam and Kangan. The party candidate was the runner-up at Habbakadal.

The strength of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s name is believed to have done the trick for the BJP. The party’s Kashmir unit bulit up its campaign on the planks of Islam, nationalism and a liberal dose of the former prime minister.

While slogans like ‘Nareye Takbeer-Allah Ho Akbar (Say He is the greatest. Allah is the greatest)’ were heard in all BJP rallies, the party sold initiatives taken when Vajpayee was in power, like the opening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road, cordial relations with Pakistan and even the initiation of the Centre-Hurriyat dialogue process, to woo voters.

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