The PDP looks a distant third in the race, observes Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir affairs.
IMAGE: Jammu and Kashmir National Conference Vice President Omar Abdullah at a rally in Ganderbal, August 29, 2024 ahead of the Jammu and Kashmir assembly election. Photograph: ANI Photo
I was a 17-year-old student when the first election to the Constituent Assembly of the semi-autonomous state of Jammu and Kashmir, including Ladakh, was held in 1951.
The historic moment went almost unnoticed as the ruling National Conference headed by the then prime minister of the state Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah went home, infamously, with all the 75 seats, 73 of these uncontested and 2 nominally contested in Jammu region.
73 years and 11 elections later, the 2024 election to the 90-member legislative assembly of the Union Territory of J&K-minus Ladakh got off with a surprisingly tumultuous start last week, with a near stampede around most of the electoral offices for filing nominations for the first of the three-phase elections.
That, despite the fact that only three assembly elections, in 2002, 2008 and 2014, resulted in regime change, as against over a dozen changes of faces at the helm between the elections.
A quick guess at this early stage places the National Conference-Congress alliance in the lead, followed by the BJP. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) looks a distant third in the race.
The PDP’s prospect lies in how it eventually fares. If — and it is a big if — it could come up with a tally of say between five and ten seats, obviously from the Valley, it would perhaps emerge as the so-called king maker (only) in case the NC-Congress fall short of the majority (46 seats) target.
IMAGE: Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Ashok Bhat interacts with a shopkeeper during a door-to-door campaign in the Habba Kadal area of Srinagar, August 29, 2024. Photograph: ANI Photo
In a way, today’s prospective numerical scenario seems to be partially an inverted replica of the 2014 scenario at the end of which the Mufti Mohammad Sayeed-led PDP had emerged as the largest party with 28 seats, all from the Valley followed by the BJP’s tally of 25 seats, all from Jammu region.
In the then 87-member House, the NC’s score was 21 while the Congress tally stood at 12 seats.
The ill-fated PDP-BJP alliance infamously ended prematurely in 2018 and was followed by the shock-and-awe assault on August 5, 2019 that changed the geography, history, shape, size and complexion of the erstwhile J&K state.
Its lingering fallout today overhangs the poll atmosphere, like it did in the case of recent Lok Sabha elections.
Bits and pieces of that jigsaw puzzle can be seen flying across the Valley in the shape of certain unusual pre-poll developments.
For one, the banned Jamaat e Islami is itching to take the plunge by identifying ‘sympathetic’ contenders deserving its electoral support now that the expectation of a ban on the organisation being lifted had not materialised. The Jamaat has pockets of influence mainly in South Kashmir.
IMAGE: Peoples Democratic Party president and former J&K chief minister Mehbooba Mufti along with other PDP leaders welcome Sheikh Gowhar, who joined the party and is its candidate for the Zadibal constituency, at party headquarters in Srinagar, August 28, 2024. Photograph: Umar Ganie for Rediff.com
Another feature of the scene is that the so-called king’s parties, hastily cannibalised out of (mainly) the PDP and the NC, in the deadening aftermath of ‘August 5, 2019’ are evaporating into thin air after being mauled in the parliamentary elections.
Their ‘reformed’ apologetic tone and tenor does not seem to be taking them anywhere. Their total collapse was one of the reasons why the BJP was exploring the Jamaat ternative.
The purpose is to somehow divide and split the NC and PDP vote base while the BJP is frantically looking for a toehold on the Valley’s coveted electoral map.
The BJP abstained from contesting the parliamentary poll from Kashmir and its proxies melted away.
It was this sense of rootlessness that deterred it from contesting any of the three Lok Sabha seats in the Valley.
Its humiliated proxies are left to fight for their existence.
However, having come thus far since its audacious action in 2019, the BJP simply couldn’t afford to be seen keeping itself away from the assembly elections in the Valley.
Quite a few Constitutional and administrative measures have been put in place, obviously to harvest its political/electoral crop.
The ongoing assembly election is the litmus test, more so after the party’s comparatively unsatisfactory performance in the Lok Sabha poll.
IMAGE: Omar Abdullah meets NC supporters during the rally. Photograph: ANI Photo
The unprecedented enthusiasm in the Valley for contesting the election for, what in effect would be less than a pale shadow of the abrogated powerful legislature is quite surprising.
While the presence of traditionally contesting parties and groups is understandable it is the abnormally long list of other contestants that defies a convincing answer.
This scenario contrasts with the history of assembly elections in J&K.
After a literally non-election of 1951, the next three rounds in 1957, 1962, 1967 recorded an abnormally high percentage of uncontested returns.
43 uncontested versus 32 contested seats in 1957, 34 uncontested versus 41 contested in 1962 and as many as 53 uncontested versus 22 contested in 1967 assembly elections.
In the 1972 elections when the Jamaat e Islami made its first foray and won 5 out of the 75 assembly seats it contested the number of the uncontested seats fell to half a dozen.
In what is generally acknowledged to be the state’s first ever acknowledged free and fair poll in 1977 parameters changed drastically.
It was the time Sheikh Abdullah, after his 1975 return to mainstream politics under the Kashmir Accord, swept the polls. He died in 1982.
Post-Sheikh Abdullah, his National Conference contested elections in 1983, 1987, 1996, 2002, 2008 and 2014.
The 1987 election results were allegedly rigged to favour the NC.
This is being cited as one of the reasons for outbreak of armed militancy in the 1990s. That, however, is a separate story.
The NC ruled supreme till 2002 when the PDP in its maiden entry won 16 seats, at the NC’s expense and allied with the Congress to form a rotational coalition.
In the 2008 assembly elections the NC regained its legislative supremacy only to be dispossessed, again, by its bete noir the PDP in the following round in 2014.
Post-2014 the PDP’s alliance with the BJP and its eventual ‘miscarriage’ in 2018 is yet another story whose end is a work-in-progress.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
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