The important district development council polls to elect 280 members in 20 districts in Jammu and Kashmir are to be held between  November 28 and  December 19. Campaign of BJP in these polls in J&K is being pitched as between the Tricolour and the Pakistan China lovers.

Tarun Chugh, the recently appointed BJP national general secretary, who has been given charge of J&K in place of Ram Madhav, stated that the party-backed candidates will campaign on the lines of ‘Kaun Tiranga Dhoega (Who will carry the national flag)’. BJP is pitching itself as a party formed of protectors of the national flag in the Valley.

Chugh also claimed that the mood in the state was against the Gupkar alliance, a conglomerate of regional parties that includes the National Conference (NC) and the Peoples’s Democratic Party (PDP). He added that the battle in the polls in J&K was between the lovers of tricolour and lovers of Pakistan- China and that after having tested Mehbooba and Abdullah, the people want change in the region.

From the statements made by Tarun Chugh, it is clear that BJP is pulling out all stops as this is the first electoral exercise in J&K since Article 370 was abrogated and the erstwhile state was divided into two union territories. Home Minister Amit Shah had set the tone by terming the Gupkar Alliance, a conglomerate of regional parties, as the ‘Gupkar Gang’. On November 17, he had  described the Gupkar alliance as a global gathbandhan linked with Pakistan & China working against Tricolour.

Apart from Chugh, the party has also appointed Himachal Pradesh in-charge Avinash Rai Khanna, Delhi BJP leader Ashish Sood and Union Minister Anurag Thakur to oversee the poll process. Other senior leaders who are likely to campaign are union ministers Jitendra Singh, Smriti Irani, Pratap Sarangi; Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, V. K. Singh, and Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur. These local polls are especially crucial for the BJP as they signal a return of normalcy in the erstwhile state and a sort of referendum on the abrogation of Article 370.