Cong-BJP bridge across Amarnath divide

New Delhi, September 2 : It was national consensus that won the day in Jammu and Kashmir. Even as the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti (SASS) claimed that the agitation reflected the aspirations of Jammu — “Jammu psyche”, as BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley described it — the stir, and an equally belligerent counter-reaction in the Valley, threatened to rupture the delicate fabric holding Jammu and Kashmir together.

It was a belated realisation that the hardening of positions didn’t augur well either for the state or the country that the BJP responded positively once the Congress reached out to its top brass. When Congress president Sonia Gandhi called BJP chief Rajnath Singh last month, Amarnath figured in their five-minute conversation. A Congress spokesperson said Sonia wanted the BJP to help the Government defuse the situation. Rajnath said he wanted the Government to take “concrete measures” before his party could do something. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited BJP leader L K Advani to discuss Amarnath land row.

The argument that the state Government couldn’t go against two high court orders (allowing the diversion of the forestland to the “user” during the Amarnath yatra) and a law passed by the state Assembly formed the main argument of Advani’s letter to the PM.

The PM replied positively. “He could have said, ‘I have received your letter’. But he chose to write a detailed letter, broadly agreeing with Advani’s thesis,” said a BJP leader.

Even as Advani talked to Punjab CM to get roadblocks cleared in his state that threatened to cut off J&K from the rest of the country, it was clear that the SASS stir was being stage-managed by the RSS. While leaders like SASS convener Leela Karan Sharma were known to have an excellent rapport with RSS’s Indresh — whose idea of Jammu and Kashmir’s trifurcation was shot down by the BJP — others like Ajay Jamwal — a key J&K BJP functionary — were in close contact with Jaitley. In fact, a week after the Jammu agitation started, the BJP got a survey done that showed that it would make handsome gains in the 20 Hindu-dominated seats in the region.

With Pranab Mukherjee coming into the picture, the UPA developed a better understanding of the situation.

The desire of a section of the BJP to milk Amarnath for electoral benefits in other parts of the country ebbed due to two reasons: the Congress agreed with the BJP’s argument that the two...

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