Electoral upheaval in Kashmir

Just as the ruling political party of India, Bhartiya Janata Party’s ‘Ab Ki Baar Char Su Par’ slogan has poorly been rejected by the Indian voters in the Parliamentary elections,  the same way the Kashmiri voters have created an earthquake in the mainstream politics of Kashmir by defeating two former Chief Ministers who happen to be the heads of their political outfits.

Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto often said in her speeches that “democracy is the best revenge”.

If its reality is to be seen, the land of Kashmir proved it today when the voters gave a thumping victory to Engineer Rasheed, defeating the 80-year-old political party, the National Conference, in north Kashmir. Its leader, the head, two-time former Chief Minister and former Union Minister for External Affairs, Omar Abdullah, was not defeated but humiliated. For this reason, he expressed his outbursts on micro-blogging sites, suggesting that the undercurrent sentiments of freedom might resurface militancy under the electoral exercise’s garb.

Hundreds of thousands of voters of North Kashmir themselves could hardly believe how they unquestioningly believed Engineer Rasheed’s 24-year-old student son, who did not raise any slogan for the freedom of Kashmir or the restoration of Article 370 but asked votes for the release of his father and other thousands of Kashmiri incarcerated in Indian jails since decades on charges of anti-national activities in Jammu and Kashmir.

This was something epic in the Kashmir elections.

Immediately, hordes of people ran Engineer Rashid’s election campaign with their money and defeated two political stalwarts. Omar Abdullah and Sajjad Ghani Lone, the son of the assassinated politician Abdul Ghani Lone, a highly respected figure in the North who called Prime Minister Modi his elder brother a few years ago and was blessed by the BJP, were severely defeated in the electoral exercise.

Another political party, the People’s Democratic Party, nearly got decimated in the elections. Its chief and former chief minister, Mehbooba Mufti, was defeated in her bastion of South Kashmir and lost all three Lok Sabha constituencies, which she had won by a considerable margin in the 2014 Parliamentary elections.

The massive voter turnout seems to have cut off the BJP central government’s hand-holding on Altaf Bukhari’s Apni party, including the People’s Conference and the party of former Union Minister and former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. Many in JK believed them to be B teams of the BJP.

There was a solid inherent message given to mainstream politicians that any regional party staying under the wings of the BJP and then asking for votes from the Kashmiri masses, its political existence would be wiped out, and there would be nobody to even mention it in the Valley.

 In mainland India, be it Tamil Nadu’s Anna DMK, Punjab’s Shiromani Akali Dal, or Jammu Kashmir’s People’s Democratic Party, their decline began as soon as the BJP’s shadow fell on them or they took refuge in the BJP’s camp. Consequently, all these parties are currently struggling for their existence and survival.

Media debates often raise the question of why Kashmiris voted for the two candidates of the National Conference, Agha Ruhollah and Mian Mohammad Altaf, when the people have severely criticized this party’s policies of seven decades, as evidenced by the defeat of its Supremo Omar Abdullah.

These politicians got votes on their personality cults, and the National Conference played a minimal role in grabbing the voters for them.

Agha Ruhollah is the only politician in the National Conference who vehemently opposed the BJP’s abrogation of Art 370 for the last five years. He resigned from the party spokesmanship to register his resentment over the party’s lackadaisical approach, which forced him to stay away from the party for some time.

Many youths voted for him because of his open rebellion against the party’s politics and his public sentiments across the erstwhile state. Many analysts believe that he did not compromise on the JK’s autonomy, which has been his party’s age-old practice.

Another successful NC candidate was accepted by almost every voter in the South of Kashmir the day his candidature was announced. One significant reason for Mian Mohammad Altaf’s victory over Mehbooba Mufti is the presence of millions of Gujjar and Pahari voters in the Constituency.

Second, by getting votes against the BJP in the last assembly elections and then allying with the same Hindutva party, Kashmiris were cautious and then skeptical, too. They have not forgotten even if they wanted to. The voters have punished Mehbooba Mufti for her actions after getting votes against the BJP.

By reshaping the constituencies in the delimitation exercise and changing the reservation policy, the BJP believed that the parliamentary seat of South Kashmir was now in its pocket. This LS seat was expected to bring four to five assembly seats within Kashmir for BJP. If it happens to get a few seats, that could help lay the foundation of the party in the future assembly of JK.

But NC’s strategy worked well. Unexpectedly to BJP, the party fielded the saintly figure of this whole constituency, knowing his prominence in the region. Mian Altaf is a revered and respected religious Peer with millions of followers, mainly from the Gujjar and Bakarwaal communities.

BJP played a trump card by changing the constituency, but the emergence of Mian Altaf as a winnable candidate proved to be a backfire.

Undoubtedly, the National Conference’s groundwork of reaching out door to door cannot be ignored in winning the seat considerably. Still, most of the votes Mian Altaf got were due to his religious and ethnic identity.

From the time of the Former PM of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to the present PM Modi, whether it is the National Conference or the PDP, both allies of the BJP in the central government in the past or the new political parties that includes Apni party, the People’s Conference or the Democratic Azad Party, Kashmiri voters have taken the best revenge on them by using the vote politics and made them believe that as long as you pretend to represent the Delhi government in Jammu and Kashmir, people will continue to punish you. When these political parties learn to represent JK in the Indian Parliament, the survival and credibility of these political parties might be re-considered by Kashmiri voters.

Otherwise, according to the poet, your tale will not be one of the tales in the future.

Nayeema Ahmad Mahjoor is an Author and Journalist)