BJP had no role to play, says Ram Madhav as friction in NC intensifies

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has no involvement in the internal affairs of the National Conference (NC), the ruling party in Jammu and Kashmir, and the regional party’s “leaders are fighting among themselves”, a senior party leader said on Tuesday after Srinagar MP Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi resigned from the party and the Lok Sabha.

“I would not like to comment on the matter, but the National Conference is visibly divided today… Let me reiterate that we have no involvement in the internal affairs of the National Conference,” BJP’s national vice president and former state and election in-charge Ram Madhav, told reporters in Jammu on Tuesday.

Madhav’s statement came after the Srinagar MP announced his resignation at a rally. While Ruhulla had spoken about his differences with the party leadership on several occasions, some legislators are also said to be miffed over the induction of four new faces into the Omar Abdullah cabinet last month.

A senior BJP leader in J&K, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Madhav’s statement was a clear indication that the BJP, which was being confronted by a united opposition over allegations of electoral malpractices, did not want to be seen to be engineering a split in the NC that could impact the government in the union territory.

The BJP has been accused of orchestrating splits in the Trinamool Congress, the Shiv Sena, the NCP, and, most recently, the United Democratic Party (UDP) in Meghalaya.

“Both the regional parties, the NC and the PDP, have joined the Opposition’s campaign (against the alleged vote theft and the removal of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar). The BJP does not want to be dragged into another controversy,” the leader explained.

The BJP leader asserted that the crisis in the NC goes beyond Ruhulla but it wasn’t true that the BJP had orchestrated the dissent.

He said the BJP’s focus was “on the party’s organic expansion”. In 2015, the party aligned with the PDP to form government in the erstwhile state, which could not complete its term and ended prematurely after three years.

“The experience of running the government with the PDP was not very pleasant after Mufti Sahab’s demise. The BJP is open to whoever wants to join the party, but we are not looking at any short-term measures,” the leader said.

Splits the BJP has been blamed for

After the BJP’s historic win in West Bengal this year, a group of TMC lawmakers announced in June that they would join the NDA and merged with the little-known NCPI, a party that had contested only a few seats in Tripura. TMC leader and former WB chief minister Mamata Banerjee blamed the BJP for engineering the split.

In April, seven of the Aam Aadmi Party’s 10 Rajya Sabha lawmakers switched sides to the BJP. The AAP claimed the process was unconstitutional, as the anti-defection laws require two-thirds of the “original” party to merge. The chairman, however, allowed the merger. The AAP now has just three MPs in the Upper House.

The BJP was also blamed for orchestrating the 2023 split in the NCP when party strongman and Sharad Pawar’s nephew, the late Ajit Pawar, staked a claim to being the original NCP and, along with a group of leaders, joined the BJP-led Mahayuti government in Maharashtra.

In 2022, the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, which had teamed with the NCP and the Congress to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra, also split after a group headed by Eknath Shinde aligned with the BJP-led NDA. The Shinde-led Sena was later recognised as the Shiv Sena, while the Uddhav-led faction became the Shiv Sena (UBT).