Article 370 verdict another shot in the arm for BJP before Lok Sabha polls

The Supreme Court’s verdict upholding the abrogation of Article 370 comes as a major boost for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his BJP just four months before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Conversely, it also makes the electoral challenge that lies ahead for a still coalescing Opposition all the more daunting.

With massive victories in three Hindi heartland states recently added to its kitty and the inauguration of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya — incidentally, made possible by another Supreme Court judgment – due next month, the BJP is certain to dial up its rhetoric of jingoistic nationalism using the Article 370 judgment as another example of Modi’s commitment to Bharat’s integration and progress, replete with the underpinnings of Hindutva.

This was evident in the aggressive ripostes that came the Congress and the wider Opposition’s way from Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the Rajya Sabha within hours of the verdict being delivered by the apex court’s five-judge Constitution Bench. Aided by the remarkable coincidence of the Article 370 judgment, reserved by the court on September 5, coming just ahead of his reply to the discussion on the J&K Reservation and Reorganisation Bills in the Rajya Sabha, Shah launched a scathing diatribe against political rivals who had decried the abrogation that had come into effect on August 5, 2019. Predictably, Shah’s most caustic remarks were reserved for the Congress and, as has been the norm of the Modi decade, for the perceived follies of Jawaharlal Nehru vis-a-vis Kashmir.

The apex court’s unequivocal endorsement of the Centre’s, and by extension the BJP’s, stand that the abrogation had, after seven decades, finally achieved complete integration of J&K with the Indian Union is a point that the BJP would now boisterously tom-tom. It was, thus, not surprising that Shah, during his address in the Rajya Sabha on Monday (December 11), asserted that the Modi government took full responsibility for the abrogation and its consequences. “We own it,” Shah said, while crediting Modi for the “complete integration” of J&K with India and, in equal measure, lambasting Nehru and the Congress for “mistakes of the past” that handed parts of the erstwhile state to Pakistan (referring to areas that fall in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir).

Long-pending poll promise delivered

With the abrogation now held constitutionally valid and the scope of its review by the apex court highly unlikely, the BJP can rightfully claim credit for delivering on one of its oldest poll promises — one that dated back to the Jana Sangh days and even predated the party’s campaign for a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. Moreover, while the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya could be made possible only because of a facilitating, albeit highly contentious, judgment by the apex court, the abrogation of Article 370 was entirely born out of an Executive decision, no matter how devious, of the Modi regime and has only been upheld by the apex judiciary.

In the battle of political rhetoric, it would, of course, matter little that the apex court’s decision to uphold the abrogation comes with its perplexing acknowledgment that the “circuitous manner” in which amendments were made to the Constitution to enable the revocation of Article 370 was bad in law, “defeats the purpose of having a procedure to make amendments” and that the consequences of allowing such amendments “would be disastrous”. What matters electorally is only that the BJP had finally delivered on its long-pending poll promise of the abrogation, it had done so despite raucous opposition and foreseeable legal challenges and, most importantly, that Modi had made it possible.

With two of its most prominent and long-pending poll promises fulfilled, the BJP can now focus its collective and formidable political clout, both in Parliament and a majority of the states, to roll out its third outstanding dream — the Uniform Civil Code. Saffron-ruled Uttarakhand is already in the final lap of implementing its draft UCC and the BJP, which has already begun consultations for a similar legislation at the central level, would only be too happy to build up this bogey before the Lok Sabha polls.

Opposition in a fix

Needless to say that the Opposition, still unsure of both the sustainability and electoral tenability of its simultaneously evolving and disintegrating INDIA coalition, is now staring at an even more egregious electoral battle against the BJP in the general elections, due April-May, than it did in the aftermath of the saffron tsunami that swept across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan earlier this month.

J&K parties such as the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party, both part of the INDIA bloc, have no option but to strike a belligerent note against the apex court’s ruling in the Article 370 case. The stand of these two parties would allow the BJP to sting the INDIA coalition as a whole on the plank of national integrity while concurrently targeting the Congress for “politics of appeasement in J&K”.

The Grand Old Party’s attempts to now distance itself from the Article 370 debate — after Monday’s judgment, party leaders P Chidambaram and Abhishek Manu Singhvi conceded that Article 370 was now a “closed chapter” for the party though it “respectfully disagreed” with the apex court’s view — is unlikely to win it any favour with the NC, PDP, or even the people of Kashmir, who had turned up in massive numbers at Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in Srinagar last January.

What would be INDIA stand?

It would be interesting to see how the INDIA bloc formulates its position on the Article 370 judgment — if at all it does — when its senior leaders meet for their fourth conclave in Delhi on December 19, particularly since another key constituent, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena faction, has unequivocally welcomed the apex court’s verdict.

Sources in the alliance told The Federal that the Congress and some other constituents are of the view that if the bloc has to take a position on the matter, it should confine its stand only to calling for restoration of J&K’s statehood “at the earliest”, in line with the apex court’s ruling. A senior Congress leader also told The Federal that the alliance may consider a joint resolution asserting that elections to the J&K assembly, for which the SC has now set a September 30, 2024 deadline, must be held “without any delay and that restoration of statehood should precede the polls”.

Opposition leaders conceded privately that the political almanac, as it appears today in light of the BJP’s recent poll victories, the court’s verdict in the Article 370 case, the upcoming inauguration of the Ram Mandir and the Modi government’s recent decision of extending the free ration scheme for 80 crore beneficiaries until December 2028, coupled with the possibility of more populist and polarising actions by the Prime Minister over the next four months may have already made the results of the 2024 poll battle a foregone conclusion.