Masarat Alam: Modi’s Vajpayee Moment or Recipe for Disaster?

Bhupendra Chaubey looks at why the BJP-PDP alliance is already on the rocks. Is there a way out for Modi in the Masarat Alam impasse?

The man in the picture is Masarat Alam, a leader of the Hurriyat conference, put behind bars by the Omar Abdullah government in 2010 for promoting an anti India sentiment in the Kashmir valley. He is the man now creating a massive headache for Prime Minister Modi.

By aligning with the PDP, a party ideologically so different from his own, Narendra Modi showed that like Vajpayee, he too could reach out to his opponents. Through his alliance with Mufti, the PM indicated that he was even open to reaching out to the separatists and even Pakistan. But the PDP isn’t following the script.