After recording stupendous victory on three lok Sabha seats in Jammu and ladakh regions and garnering highest 32 per cent vote share the State unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has set for itself the target of securing 44 Assembly seats in the forthcoming Assembly polls in J&K.
Rajya Sabha member and State prabhari Avinash Rai Khanna on Sunday said, “Mission 44+ is the mission of J&K BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants the BJP Government in the State.”On the other hand the ruling alliance which lost all the six lok Sabha seats in the State is in complete disarray and busy playing blame-game and targeting each other for tasting worst defeat while remaining in office.
The BJP leadership is upbeat and believes the target of winning 44 Assembly seats is achievable. Their confidence comes from the recent voting trends across 37 Assembly segments in Jammu province.The party recorded healthy lead on 24 Assembly segments spread across two lok Sabha seats in Jammu province. The BJP had earlier won 11 Assembly seats in 2008 polls.
As part of its strategy the BJP is banking heavily on the internal bickering within the alliance partners in the State and may try to take full advantage by drawing wedge between the Congress and the National Conference.
Interestingly, the faction ridden alliance partners in the State have also made up their mind to dump each other and in all likelihood would field separate candidates. In case of multi-corner contest the BJP candidates would emerge front runners in several other Assembly constituencies due to division of vote share between the Congress, the NC and the PDP candidates.
As of now the alliance partners are clinging on to each other to buy some time ahead of the Assembly polls, but the top brass of the National Conference and the State Congress unit during internal deliberations have clearly suggested to their party cadre to prepare themselves for contesting the polls separately in order to win the lost ground.
Pradesh Congress Committee chief Saif-ud-din Soz has claimed that the Congress has learnt many lessons during the lok Sabha polls and won’t be repeating past mistakes of forging any pre poll alliance. On the other hand Omar Abdullah is also learnt to have suggested that the party High Command would take a final call. At the same time he is also not keen on contesting Assembly polls along with alliance candidate.
Meanwhile, the BJP leadership on Sunday organised a meeting of office bearers and urged the cadre to gear themselves to form the next Government in J&K on its own.Addressing the party workers Avinash Rai Khann said the political situation in Jammu, Kashmir and ladakh is very conducive for electoral success and added that the Narendra Modi wave is strongly sweeping the State like rest of the country.
Member of Parliament & State president Jugal Kishore Sharma said that people want NC and Congress-free State and our role has become all the more important to fulfill the wishes of the people. He said that complete wipe out of NC-Congress coalition candidates in the general polls are clear indicators of the resolve of people who are again ready to repose faith in us in the forthcoming Assembly elections. He said that every single activist of the party has to put more efforts to achieve the desired goal in J&K.
National Executive Member Nirmal Singh said, “We have succeeded in achieving our mission 272+ in the lok Sabha elections which have added to the morale of party activists. We have to work with same zeal to achieve next target in the State so that we form our Government.”