Jammu, Aug. 23 -- For the first time since the days of the Praja Parishad and the Jan Sangh - the ideological forerunners of today's Bharatiya Janata Party - the party has taken its most consequential organisational exercise into the heart of the Kashmir Valley. On Sunday, Srinagar became the venue for the BJP's first-ever State-level Core Body meeting, a two-day gathering that began August 23 and will run through August 24, marking a deliberate and symbolically loaded departure from decades of Jammu-centric politics.
The optics are unmistakable. A party that has never won a single Assembly seat in the Valley chose the Valley's summer capital to plot its next move - a signal, party insiders suggest, that the BJP is done treating Kashmir as...