Srinagar, Sept. 21 -- BJP won 29 Assembly seats in Jammu in 2024 and not a single one in Kashmir. Yet that does not mean it cannot one day lead a government in Jammu and Kashmir.

That sounds contradictory only if one assumes that ruling J&K requires BJP to first conquer the Valley electorally. It does not.

What BJP needs is 46 MLAs. It already has 29. The real question, therefore, is not whether BJP can start winning Kashmir.

It is whether Kashmir remains politically consolidated enough to prevent BJP's Jammu bloc from becoming the pivot around which a future government is formed.

That distinction changes the entire calculation. If Kashmir continues to return one dominant anti-BJP formation, BJP's route to power remains difficult.

If...