The agitation over the Amarnath temple board, which enabled the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) win an all-time high of 11 seats in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections four months ago, is unlikely to help the party’s two candidates in the coming Lok Sabha elections.
This is despite the party has fielded Leela Karan Sharma — convener of the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti (SASS) that had led the two-month-long agitation over transfer of forest land to the Amarnath shrine — as its candidate from the Jammu-Poonch Lok Sabha constituency.
Sharma, an advocate, was not even a member of the BJP till he was offered the ticket to contest as a candidate from the prestigious constituency.
However, the party’s central leadership was forced to opt for Nirmal Singh, its former state president, instead of nominating another SASS member for the Doda-Udhampur constituency after party workers had threatened revolt.
The central leadership too believe that the “Amarnath wave” that had created a groundswell of support for the party’s candidates in the Assembly elections, had faded away. “We know that climate is not the same in Jammu this time,” a senior party leader said.
The Amarnath agitation had severely disrupted normal life in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region, while it also divided the state on communal lines. The sensitive issue subsequently led to the fall of the Ghulam Nabi Azad-led state government.
Interestingly, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the core organisation of the Hindutva parties, has rated the Amarnath agitation as a model for its future activities across the country. Ram Madhav, media coordinator of the RSS, told Business Standard that the “Amarnath agitation was a successful experiment for the Sangh and we have decided to replicate it all over the country in our future actions”.
The Amarnath model, according to Madhav, involved mobilisation of people cutting across communal lines on the grassroots levels and allowing an issue to be handled by a mass agitation instead of being hijacked by one political party or a leader.
However, the BJP’s plans for encashing the Amarnath factor in Jammu once again did not take off as the party’s state unit has been facing serious dissention.
