Praful Patel, working president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, an ally of the NCP, said on Sunday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party “fully respects democratic traditions.” He was refuting Jammu and Kashmir President Omar Abdullah’s claims that the BJP was trying to lure members of his party’s National Conference (NC) to try to come to power in the UT “through the back door”.
Patel, who remained a minister in the Congress-led Manmohan Singh’s United Progressive Alliance regime before Modi came to power, said the BJP “works with faith in the democratic process.”
He rejected Omar Abdullah’s claims that the BJP was “fracturing several political parties”.
Patel belongs to the late Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) which received the original name and symbol from the Election Commission in 2024, after Ajit broke away from his uncle, party co-founder Sharad Pawar, to align with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Maharashtra and at the Centre. This was after the BJP faced allegations that it had also engineered a split in the Shiv Sena earlier.
Read also | ‘Enough’: Omar Abdullah takes Jammu and Kashmir campaign to Delhi, protest on July 20
On the issue of Jammu and Kashmir state, Patel stressed that the National Conference emerged as the largest single party in the elections held in 2024 and received the support of the Congress. “No hurdles have been placed in the way of this alliance to form a government there, and this is a healthy democratic exercise,” Patel told reporters in Gondia, Maharashtra.
He stressed, “Today, the Congress Party and other parties run governments in many Indian states; any talk or suggestion to suppress democracy in those places is wrong.”
“We don’t need to include anyone else.”
Also speaking on the issue, Chhattisgarh Assembly Speaker and former Chief Minister Raman Singh said that the BJP has “no interest in such matters”.
“The BJP is the biggest party in the world. We don’t need to include anyone else,” he said.
In recent weeks, the BJP has capitalized on defections in the APC – where it bagged six Rajya Sabha MPs led by Raghav Chadha – and later in the TMC in Bengal led by Mamata Banerjee whose defecting MPs allied with the BJP-led NDA via the little-known Tripura Party. Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) also saw defections to Eknath Shinde’s BJP-aligned Shiv Sena.
But BJP leader Dinesh Sharma claimed that Omar Abdullah was making allegations of trying to break his party because they are “allies of the Congress, so they also have the same mentality as the Congress; if they see defeat coming, they start making accusations.”
NC leader Kong Ma said
Congressman Imran Masood launched a counterattack, saying: “Democracy is in danger, and people must take a stand. The economy has declined, and opposition leaders are being targeted. We are all witnessing what is happening in Bengal.”
Specifically, Omar Abdullah claimed that the BJP tried to lure at least one of his party members with an “offer $20-30 crore” and a ministerial berth to switch sides.
The BJP has been accused of breaking several political parties, including the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the Shiv Sena (UBT), and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
He was addressing a rally at the National Conference on the demand for statehood ahead of the ‘Delhi Chalo’ protest scheduled for July 20.
The J&K CM described the BJP as a “backdoor party”, saying it breaks up ruling parties in states where they fail to get majority.
Electoral mathematics
After abrogating Article 370 in 2019, the Center formed two union territories by bifurcating the then state of Jammu and Kashmir, forming Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh as two separate union territories, with an assembly and a cabinet in the former.
The elections were held in 2024 and recorded a participation rate of 63.45%. The NCP-Congress alliance achieved a decisive victory by winning 49 out of 90 seats in the assembly, achieving the majority mark. At the individual level, the JKNC won 42 seats, the Indian National Congress won six seats, and the Communist Party of India won one seat.
The BJP won 29 seats, sweeping the Hindu-concentrated Jammu region into the Muslim-majority state of UT. The People’s Democratic Party, which was in power with the support of the BJP before the 2019 move, got just three seats.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah had said that the state’s status would be restored once the situation “returns to normal”. In 2023, the Supreme Court upheld the decision to abolish Article 370, while not addressing the issue of restoring the state, as the Center had assured that it would be restored “in due course.”
