The BJP MLA from Jammu’s Kishtwar, Shagun Parihar, landed in a row last week when the chief operating officer (COO) of the Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL) accused her of alleged interference in the 850 MW Ratle hydroelectric project, warning that continued disruptions could force the company to pull out of the project.
The MEIL has been carrying out the construction work on this long-pending hydel project on the Chenab river in the hilly Kishtwar district, which is a joint venture between the Centre and the Jammu and Kashmir government.
Singh alleged that Parihar has been pushing the company to hire “her people” in the project since her election last year, and that the company’s decision to retrench 200 workers in September this year escalated tensions.
On her part, the first-time BJP MLA dismissed the COO’s allegations as “irresponsible” and “irrelevant”, alleging they were meant to malign a woman MLA and hide the company’s “incompetence”. Parihar, 30, also accused him of recruiting mostly surrendered militants for the project work.
The firebrand BJP legislator’s entry into politics six years ago took place in the shadow of a personal tragedy. Parihar’s father Ajit Parihar and uncle Anil Parihar, both BJP leaders, were killed by militants near their house in Kishtwar town on November 1, 2018, ahead of the J&K panchayat elections. She was then doing her PhD in Electronics and was preparing for the civil services examination.
Both the Parihar brothers had been associated with the BJP for a long time, with Anil serving as the state party secretary at the time. Their killings left scars on her family and the local community.
To carry forward their political legacy, Parihar joined the BJP in 2019. Actively participating in the BJP’s grassroots campaigns and engaging with the minority Hindu community, she soon made a mark for herself in the party in the Jammu region.
A BJP insider said, “Parihar’s focus on the concerns and aspirations of her community, ability to empathise and communicate effectively played a significant role in her rise in the organisation.”
The BJP then appointed Parihar its spokesperson in Kishtwar district. In the September-October 2024 elections to the 90-member J&K Assembly, the party also fielded her from the Muslim-dominated Kishtwar constituency, where she defeated senior National Conference (NC) leader and ex-minister Sajjad Kitcloo by 521 votes to emerge as the BJP’s lone woman MLA as well as the youngest legislator in the House at the age of 29.
Addressing her supporters following her win, Parihar spoke of the enduring impact of violence on local people. “I have lost my father and uncle, some have lost their brothers and sons,’’ she said, stressing that her priority would be to ensure peace and happiness in the area. “My effort will be to ensure that every child here has his father’s hand over his head,’’ she added.
Kishtwar, which was once part of Doda, has been one of the most communally sensitive districts in J&K. It had seen several massacres of the minority community during the peak militancy period in the 1990s besides incidents of communal violence, which resulted in sharply polarising the two communities despite efforts by successive governments to bridge this divide.
After the onset of militancy in J&K, Kishtwar was one of the first few belts in the erstwhile state, where the minority group formed village defence committees (VDCs) and picked guns to fight militants. The VDCs played a significant role in countering militancy in the area, even as there had also been allegations of their atrocities on unarmed people from the majority community at some places.
During the J&K Assembly session in October this year, Parihar sparked a row in the House by alleging that the NC-led government was not carrying out any development work in certain areas of her constituency inhabited by “rashtrawadi Hindu log (nationalist Hindus)”.
As her remarks drew sharp objections from the NC members, who accused her of injecting communal rhetoric into a House debate, Speaker Abdul Rahim Rather counselled Parihar to “focus on hard work and disciplined language in your address’’, adding that “You are a first-time MLA with big goals ahead”.
Against the fraught backdrop of Kishtwar politics, Parihar’s bid to accuse the MEIL’s top official of “recruitment of surrendered militants” in the crucial hydel project has not come as a surprise in the J&K political circles.
Speaking to The Indian Express, the NC’s Jammu province chief Rattan Lal Gupta alleged that “local BJP legislators are interfering not only in the Ratle project but also in other hydroelectric projects in Kishtwar district”.
“While such interference to put pressure for recruitment of their people irrespective of the availability of vacancies and appointment of sub contractors had been going on for long, the recent warning by a top MEIL official to pull out of the Ratle project due to disruptions has followed after the matter came to a head,” he said.
“We will approach the Centre with a request to rein in BJP legislators and stop them from interfering in the functioning of companies executing the hydel projects in J&K,’’ Gupta said.