Ahmed Ali Fayyaz
JAMMU: Months after the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, BJP’s National Executive member and former J&K President Ravinder Raina admitted that his party’s decision to contest the Parliamentary elections in Kashmir “through proxies” was wrong.
“I’ll have this deep sense of repentance till my last breath. Had we fielded our own candidate, we would have for sure won the Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha seat”, Ravinder Raina said in an exhaustive conversation in “Kashmir Podcast with Ahmed Ali Fayyaz” on Sunday.
“We had worked hard and moved extensively in all the 18 segments of the Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha seat. The situation was completely in our favour. We had mobilised our cadre and interacted with all sections of the electorate—Kashmiri Muslims, Pandits, Hindus, Sikhs, Gujjars, Bakerwals, Paharis. Everybody looked sure that the Modi Government was going to get a third consecutive term. We had given ST status to Paharis but, at the same time, protected the reservation quota of the Gujjars and other tribal communities. Everybody wanted the lotus (BJP’s election symbol) to bloom from Anantnag to Rajouri and Poonch. This was hundred percent our seat”, Raina asserted.
“As the (J&K) party president, I was keen that the BJP should field its own candidate, myself or anyone else. I was personally prepared to contest the elections from Anantnag-Rajouri. People from other parties were telling us openly that we would be winning. But sometimes parties take the decision of making combinations with the allies. They believe that a tactical alliance would benefit. But it didn’t happen”, Raina said, admitting that the decision of fielding the proxies proved wrong and counterproductive.
“I am not critical of the party’s decision. It was a collective decision of the party leadership. It was taken in the perceived larger interest. I am simply saying that we would have won a seat hands down if we had fielded our own candidate”, Raina added with a tone of regret and remorse.
The BJP leader, who got his party up to the best of its performance—29 seats in the Assembly elections of 2024—but himself lost to National Conference’s Surinder Chowdhary in Nowshera in his second election, said that his party’s decision to leave the valley blank in the Lok Sabha elections also had a negative bearing on the Assembly elections.
“We had worked exceptionally hard in a number of segments in Kashmir—Gurez, Karnah, Uri, Habbakadal, Anantnag West, Tral, Kokernag. We were sure of winning a number of such seats. We won as many as seven Lok Sabha, Assembly, BDC, DDC, ULB elections in Jammu and Kashmir during my term as the party President. Even after losing in 2024, we got the maximum ever 29 seats and 26.66% vote share as compared to the NC’s lower share of 23.60%. We won both the Jammu seats in 2014, 2019 and 2024”, Raina added.
Raina parried the question when it was pointed out to him that the BJP higher leadership was more interested in Omar Abdullah’s and Mehbooba Mufti’s defeat than the victory of the BJP’s own candidates. He simply said that “everybody wanted the lotus to bloom” when it was pointed out to him that the senior BJP leader and the Union Home Minister Amit Shah had asked the J&K people to vote “for anyone other than the NC, PDP and Congress”.
“Particularly in Rajouri and Poonch, a large chunk of the population wanted to vote for the BJP in exchange for the rights our party gave them. When we lost, many people in Rajouri-Poonch did not cook their meals”, Raina said.
“But we have made a good beginning by getting 1,56,000 votes in Kashmir. We created thousands of our supporters in all segments of Rajouri and Poonch where our party’s presence and visibility was virtually zero till last year. We are optimistic that in the future elections, BJP will fare spectacularly well in many of such areas”, Raina asserted.
