National Conference (NC) Sunday censured the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its “ilk” for employing coercion and intimidation as a tool to win crossovers for its “Team B” which had failed to make any mark in the recently-held District Development Council (DDC) polls, saying the ruling BJP was setting a wrong precedent by throwing parliamentary ethics and political propriety out the window.
A statement of NC issued here quoted the party’s Additional General Secretary Mustafa Kamal as saying that BJP engineered defections and crossovers to help its ‘Team B’ save its face value following an electoral drubbing.
He said that the administration was also playing “partisan to curry favour with the ruling party and their stooges”.
“Defections and crossovers have become a new normal in this part of the world. The region has turned into a breeding ground of such a breed of politics nurtured by the ruling BJP. In the long run, the current phenomenon will have a formidable bearing on the nature of electoral politics in Kashmir. The pest of defection has been a prominent feature of BJP’s new touted Kashmir policy,” Kamal said in the statement.
He said that having failed to garner support through genuine electoral process, BJP was touching new lows on daily basis to help its ‘Team B’ in its face saving.
“The rampant instances of defection and crossovers using coercion, intimidation and bullying post DDC polls in Shopian, Srinagar and elsewhere in Jammu and Kashmir is a telling indictment of BJP’s brand of politics,” he said. “BJP is wittingly helping political impropriety and opportunism take root. This, I believe is not compatible with the country’s democratic moorings and certainly not in the greater interests of a region like that of ours.”