In boost to BJP prospects in Kashmir, NC leader latest among Paharis to join fold after legislation

The BJP on Saturday got another shot in the arm as a National Conference (NC) leader from Kashmir’s Pahari community and former MLC, Syed Mohammad Rafiq Shah, joined the party along with his supporters.

“I have taken a conscious decision to join the BJP, given Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts for development, peace and providing justice to the deprived sections of society,” Rafiq Shah said. “As chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Pahari Tribal Movement, we had been struggling for political, social and economic rights of the community for the past 25 years, which were finally fulfilled by the Narendra Modi government,” he added.

Rafiq Shah, a resident of northern Kashmir’s Trehgam area in the Baramulla district, who had in 2019 switched from the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party to the NC, said the previous governments only used the Pahari community as a vote bank, but “justice” has been done to them by the Modi government. He was recently seen at the PM’s rally in Jammu on February 20.

Ever since the passage of the Central legislation granting Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the Pahari ethnic group during the recent Budget Session of Parliament, several leaders from the community have joined the BJP, including former NC minister Mushtaq Ahmad Shah Bukhari and former MLC Shehnaz Ganai, besides Abdul Qayoom Mir and Iqbal Malik, both Rajouri District Development Council members.

At another function at the BJP headquarters here on Saturday, another NC and Pahari leader in Rajouri district’s Kotranka area, Mohammad Ayub Pahalwan, also joined the BJP.

All of them were welcomed into the BJP fold by the party’s J&K unit president Ravinder Raina, who claimed that the move of leaders from other parties to join the BJP is the