Jehangir Ali 
Srinagar: The induction of Surinder Kumar Choudhary and Satish Sharma into the Omar Abdullah-led coalition government is more than a symbolic honouring of the electoral victories that have come to define the defeat of the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir’s first assembly election after the events of August 2019.
Choudhary, who joined the National Conference (NC) on July 11 last year after parting ways with the saffron party, defeated J&K BJP chief Ravinder Raina from the Nowshera assembly constituency of Rajouri district in the volatile Pir Panjal region, which has lately emerged as a new theatre of insurgency in Kashmir.
More than 56% of the mountainous Pir Panjal region’s population are Pahari, a linguistic minority that is also found in some parts of the Kashmir valley and which was, in an unprecedented move in February, granted the status of a tribe by the BJP-led Union government.
Following the reading down of Article 370, the Pir Panjal region, which falls on the Line of Control, was transformed into a laboratory for experimenting with a divisive brand of politics that sought to exploit the tribal divide in the region’s Rajouri and Poonch districts for electoral benefit.
Earlier, the J&K delimitation commission had carved out one more assembly constituency in Rajouri district in a move that was widely believed would help the saffron party’s electoral arithmetic for returning to power in J&K.
Choudhary, who was in the past with the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), had lauded the BJP and the 2022 commission over its decision, but he quit the party after a bitter public spat with Raina.
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With the assembly election reducing the BJP’s strength in the Pir Panjal region from two MLAs to only one, the stunning defeat of the J&K BJP chief, who is also a Pahari, has come to represent for the NC the defeat of an attempt to sow the seeds of discord in J&K.
After being administered the oath of office, Choudhary said: “Even though my job is full of challenges, I hope to serve the people of the Jammu region. It [the deputy CM’s portfolio] is a big responsibility and I will try to work to the best of my capabilities. It is very difficult to fill the vacuum of the past ten years, but I have full faith in the leadership of chief minister Omar Abdullah.”
‘Smoothening effect’
According to political observers, the induction of Sharma, a Congress rebel and independent MLA who is the only representative in Abdullah’s cabinet from the Hindu heartland of Jammu, is a message to the electorate there that they will not go unrepresented in the government despite their political inclination.
The Hindu heartland comprises the four districts of Kathua, Jammu, Udhampur and Samba, which predominantly voted in both the Lok Sabha as well as the assembly election for the BJP.
“I had said that we will not allow Jammu to feel that they do not have a voice or representative in this government. I have chosen a deputy chief minister from Jammu so that the people of Jammu feel that this government is as much theirs as it is of the rest,” Abdullah said after being sworn in as the first chief minister of the Union territory of J&K.
Noor Ahmad Baba, a former dean of social science at the University of Kashmir, said that the decision will strengthen the NC’s footing in the Jammu region.
“It is a very good move. The appointment of a Hindu member from Jammu as the deputy chief minister is likely to give a positive signal to Jammu’s people. It will also in all likelihood smoothen the government’s working across the regions,” he told The Wire.
‘Courageous move’
Jammu-based editor and political commentator Zafar Choudhary termed the NC’s decision to induct two ministers from Jammu into the cabinet as an “unprecedented outreach” to the Hindu-majority region and “an essential communication to the electorate” that the electoral battle has to be fought from “beyond the prism of religion”.
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“I think it needed a lot of courage and statesmanship on Abdullah’s party to go beyond its core constituency and speak to the region and communities that have not favoured the NC in decades. In terms of regional representation, the cabinet appears reminiscent, in some ways, of the first cabinet of [NC founder] Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah as chief minister,” he said.
NC spokesperson Imran Nabi Dar said that Abdullah had already committed to giving a representative government to J&K while adhering to the regional electoral arithmetic.
“Omar saheb has already said that our government will take every region and every aspiration along. The NC is committed to empowering all the regions of J&K and this decision [to induct two ministers from Jammu in Abdullah’s cabinet] is a step in that direction,” Dar said.
Senior PDP leader and former J&K minister Naeem Akhtar called it a politically unavoidable move.
“They have to try and carry Jammu along,” Akhtar said.