Exit poll | Jammu and Kashmir predictions offer silver lining to BJP

If the exit polls unleashed on TV news channels, YouTube and other social media platforms on Saturday (October 5) mirror the actual poll results due on Tuesday (October 8), there are good tidings in store for the Congress in Haryana and, along with its senior ally, the National Conference, also in Jammu and Kashmir.

That the BJP, having ruled Haryana for the past decade, the latter half of which was wildly tumultuous, was headed for a rout was widely anticipated.

As such, the projection of a comprehensive Congress victory by a majority of exit polls is hardly surprising. What could, however, somewhat sour the celebrations in Congress camp is the silver lining that these polls portend for the BJP in J&K despite the strong likelihood of the NC-Congress alliance emerging triumphant.

Watch: Reading the exit polls for Haryana, Jammu-Kashmir elections 

Seats in Jammu

Most exit polls have projected that the BJP is likely to bag 20 or more seats in the 90-member J&K Assembly.

The BJP had practically buried its ambition of winning a seat in the Muslim-majority Kashmir division of the Union Territory by bowing out of the electoral contest in 28 of the Valley’s 47 seats and fielding featherweight candidates in the remaining 19. It is, thus, expected that if the exit polls are accurate, all of these 20 or more seats apportioned to the BJP would come from the Hindu-dominated Jammu division, where the party was largely pitted in a direct contest against the Congress.

Back in 2014, when the last Assembly election in the erstwhile state was conducted, the BJP had won 25 of the 35 constituencies that constituted the Jammu division. Following the delimitation exercise, the Jammu region got six more seats in its share, taking its strength in the UT’s assembly to 43 seats.

Also read: Why elections in Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana are litmus test for BJP

It was always clear that whenever elections to the reconfigured J&K assembly are held, it would be these 43 seats where the BJP would try to maximise its gains.

People's resentment

However, by the time the Supreme Court forced the Election Commission to conduct the J&K polls, there were evident signs of the BJP struggling to keep its electoral hold on Jammu intact. The people’s resentment over the downgrading of J&K to a UT, the decision to abandon the century-old tradition of Durbar Move, the civic mess all around Jammu city and its adjoining areas, power outages coupled with ‘smart-meter’ driven inflated power bills, rising drug menace, spiralling unemployment, the shift of terror strikes from the Valley to pockets of the Jammu region had all collectively queered the BJP’s poll pitch.

Yet, if the exit polls are any indication, the BJP appears to have largely overcome these seemingly insurmountable hurdles by the time the three phase election in J&K concluded.

If the BJP does indeed emerge triumphant in over 20 seats of Jammu, while it may still be far from gaining direct control of power in the UT, it will still have much to cheer about.

Vote share increase

For starters, with 20 or more seats in its kitty, the BJP will still be able to claim that despite all the ‘noise’ against it by its rivals, it emerged with the second largest legislative bloc in J&K after the National Conference, which most pollsters believe will win upwards of 30 seats on its own (the party had contested on 56 seats, including five where it had a ‘friendly contest’ with ally, Congress).

The Prime Minister and his followers in the BJP are likely to also hark about an expected rise in the BJP’s vote share while continuing to slam the NC, Congress and the PDP for undermining the mandate of Hindu-majority Jammu.

Watch: Exclusive | What will bring peace to Kashmir? Engineer Rashid speaks to The Federal

A seat tally as predicted by the exit polls will also allow the BJP to launch a counter-offensive against its poll rivals who had painted the J&K polls as a referendum against the Centre’s abrogation of Article 370 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tall claims of having ushered in peace, prosperity and normalcy in the restive territory.

Muslim candidate victories

While a rout for the BJP in the Valley will still allow the NC, Congress, PDP and other political players from the region to claim the verdict as a resounding rejection of Modi’s Kashmir policy, the BJP can be expected to counter this by asserting that people of Jammu weren’t misled by the Opposition’s ‘propaganda’ and that, in due course, Modi’s efforts to win the trust of Kashmiris will bear fruit too.

Besides, if a few Muslim candidates of the BJP who contested from assembly segments in the Jammu region manage to win, as is expected, the saffron party can be counted upon to amplify the importance of such victories.

More importantly, given that it was pitted against the Congress in a direct contest on a bulk of seats in the Jammu division, it would be the Congress and its leadership that will come in for prickly jibes from the BJP over the “rejection”.

Congress in the dock?

If the BJP retains its 2014 tally or loses just a handful of seats from it, the Grand Old Party will also attract taunts from the NC for a failure to reverse the saffron expansion. NC vice president and former J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah had, mid-way through the poll process, expressed his anxieties over the Congress not doing enough to defeat the BJP in Jammu and scorched Rahul Gandhi for spending too much time campaigning in Kashmir, where Congress was contesting just a few seats.

Also read: J&K polls | Two sides of NC-Congress pact: Bonhomie on stage, acrimony on ground

That the Congress’s campaign in the Jammu region had begun to falter was all too evident ever since the polls were announced. The party made an inordinate delay in finalising its candidates and, as is almost always the case with the Congress, when it eventually did announce all its nominees, it was clear that the selection process had become hostage to factional politics, petty brinkmanship among leaders of its J&K unit and even sabotage.

The Congress’s canvassing too was largely lackadaisical with many Jammu leaders relying largely on “default vote” for the party on account of the voters’ anger against the BJP on various fronts.

Jammu campaign time

While Omar Abdullah publicly expressed his disapproval of Rahul Gandhi long absences from the campaign trail in Jammu, Congress leaders conceded off the record that the Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition “wasn’t giving enough time” to the Jammu campaign.

It was only in the final days of the campaign that Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi finally decided to address a series of rallies and roadshows. However, by then Jammu had been hit by a spell of bad weather leading to cancellation of Rahul’s rallies in Chhamb and Ramgarh and Priyanka being forced to skip a scheduled rally in Billavar.

If the Congress high command faltered, so did the party’s local leaders from Jammu.

Local leaders' failures

Sources told The Federal that a party stalwart and candidate from the Jammu district was “more concerned about ensuring the defeat of a young Congress candidate who had been recently drafted in for a key organisational role in the AICC than about winning his own seat”.

Several candidates also made “neither an effort to publicise the Congress’s poll guarantees for J&K nor to raise issues specific to their constituencies, such as the drying up of canals, power outages and inflated power bills, lack of basic civic amenities, etc”, sources said, adding that while the BJP “went all out to woo every disenchanted section of the Jammu voter with promises addressing specific issues, our people only talked about macro issues like restoration of statehood”.

A senior Congress leader from the Jammu region said: “Even if the exit polls are proved wrong and the BJP does slide below 20, it would not be because we fought a good election but because the people were just fed up of what they saw in the last 10 years and held Modi responsible for it”.

Altered goalpost

A NC-Congress government in J&K may not be what the BJP hoped for but an NC-Congress government with a numerically diminished Congress could still suit the saffron party just fine.

Besides, with the actual powers of the J&K Assembly and the J&K CM far more restricted now than they were a decade ago, the BJP will still exercise an indirect grip over the levers of the UT’s administration through the Lieutenant Governor – minus the accountability that the elected government will be held to by an electorate already frustrated by its decade-long disenfranchisement and rising individual challenges.

Could such a defeat prove sweeter than victory for the BJP?