Mehbooba warns of BJP's 'divisive' politics

Ahead of the Assembly elections beginning on November 25, president of the Opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Mehbooba Mufti on Monday asked the people of Jammu and Kashmir to rise above the BJP’s “sectarian politics” and give a clear mandate to her party.

Mehbooba said the PDP is committed to resisting the divisive agendas of the BJP and claimed that the two parties are going head-to-head this election since the alliance between the National Conference (NC) and the Congress had now collapsed.

“The state is facing an entirely new political scenario with the BJP emerging in some areas as a major force. The BJP aims at increasing its presence in the Assembly through a divisive agenda that is based on communal polarisation and sectarian differences,” she said at a rally in the Banihal area of Jammu region. “While the NC-Congress parties collapsed as political organisations, the contest now is directly between the PDP and the BJP.”

The PDP chief claimed the saffron party was trying to amplify its divisive agenda, which worked in this year’s Lok Sabha elections, by polarising the Muslim votes. “The BJP won three seats in the parliamentary elections by promoting communal polarisation and now it is planning to create sectarian division even within the Muslim community, as has been given out by its poll strategist through media reports.”

Mehbooba said the BJP’s designs to disempower the people of the state is what made it defeat the NC and Congress, an agenda which she asserted the PDP would unflinchingly resist.