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.
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.
Madhav’s statement came after the Srinagar MP announced his resignation at a rally. 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. “The experience of running the government with the PDP was not very pleasant after Mufti Sahab’s demise.
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.
“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. some legislators are also said to be miffed over the induction of four new faces into the Omar Abdullah cabinet last month While Ruhulla had spoken about his differences with the party leadership on several occasions. 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. He said the BJP’s focus was “on the party’s organic expansion”. The BJP is open to whoever wants to join the party, but we are not looking at any short-term measures,” the leader said.
