On a hot summer Tuesday, the former chief minister was in a cabinet meeting when her phone rang. “Madam, BJP has withdrawn support from the coalition Government,” the caller stated.
It was 19 June 2018, when direct central rule was imposed on Jammu Kashmir. It has been over five years now with no signs of polls for the assembly which was dissolved by the former Governor Satya Pal Malik in November that year.
This is not the first time that Jammu Kashmir has witnessed direct central rule. The area has been subject to direct Central rule eight times since 1977 without any local representatives in the region’s legislative assembly.
Jammu Kashmir was degraded into a union territory and the Governor’s position needed for the state demoted into a Lieutenant Governor after the uniletral abrogation of the special status of Jammu Kashmir on Aug 05, 2019. There has been no assembly election for more than nine years.
After the abrogation, the centre order the delimitation of the seats in the region, despite which there is no work over elections in Jammu Kashmir. Even though there is a lot of hand-wringing over the uncertainties, the Centre has given no final word on the polls. The BJP, according to the opposition, is postponing the elections out of concern that it will lose both the Kashmir Valley and Jammu, its supposedly bastion.
They further assert that the BJP intends to postpone the elections for as long as possible in order to advance its “nationalist agenda” while in power.