A jittery BJP has walked out of a “direct clash” in South Kashmir, one of the three Valley seats it had intended to contest, raising doubts about the success of the party’s Kashmir outreach claim.

Twenty-five people are in the fray in the constituency but the BJP chose not to field any candidate for the seat. Now the main contest will be between Mehbooba Mufti of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Mian Altaf of the National Conference (NC) and Zaffar Iqbal Manhas of the Apni Party.

The BJP had pulled out all the stops for the seat after a controversial delimitation commission sliced the Pir Panchal region from the Jammu parliamentary seat and clubbed it with South Kashmir. The central government also controversially included Paharis, a linguistic group, in the Scheduled Tribe category. The strategy was to woo the community, which is mostly Muslim and forms a quarter of the population in the new seat.

The BJP has now dropped the idea of contesting the seat and is expected to support a purported proxy from the friendly Apni Party, whose candidate Manhas is a Pahari.

“BJP claims to be the largest political party yet can’t even find candidates to contest in Anantnag-Rajouri & other seats in Kashmir,” Deepika Pushkar Nath, a lawyer from the Kashmiri Pandit community, wrote on X.

“The party is opting for proxies and are scared to fight DIRECTLY. After touting ‘normalcy’ post abrogation, this exposes their hollow claims & reliance on gimmicks,”she added.

Congress deserter Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is allegedly close to the BJP, has withdrawn his nomination from the seat over purported fears that he would cut the pro-Apni Party votes.

Union home minister Amit Shah had hinted last week that the BJP might not contest the Valley seats when he claimed the lotus would bloom in Kashmir as well when the party received the love of Kashmiris.

“I have come to appeal to the Valley voters to vote for anyone but the three dynastic parties of Farooq Sahab, Mehboobaji and Sonia Gandhi. All three work for their sons and daughters, not for you,” Shah had said.

With South Kashmir going to the polls on May 7, campaigning has gained steam across the constituency.

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Saturday accused the PDP of “being greedy” for the South Kashmir seat. Despite being part of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc, the NC and the PDP are pitted against each other in the three Lok Sabha seats in Kashmir. The PDP wanted to contest from South Kashmir but the NC was unwilling to spare any seat on the ground that it had won from all three constituencies in 2019.

Omar said the fight for the South Kashmir seat was not with the BJP or its B- or C-teams but with one of the NC’s own friends. “The fight is clearly not with the BJP. NC’s contest there is unfortunately with one of our friends who was with us till some days ago. Unfortunately, they left us for the greed of a seat. Our contest at least in South Kashmir is not with the BJP or its B- or C-teams,” he told reporters in central Kashmir, while campaigning for Srinagar candidate Aga Ruhullah.

On the BJP not fielding a candidate for the Anantnag seat, Omar said the saffron party was very much in the fray.

“They are contesting. But the only difference is they do not have their party symbol, they are contesting on ‘cricket bat’ (Apni Party) and ‘apple’ (People’s Conference) symbols. We are aware of who the BJP supports here, but they stand no chance of winning,” he said.

The Sajjad Lone-led People’s Conference is also a purported BJP ally. Lone is contesting from Baramulla, the North Kashmir seat.