Jammu And Kashmir: A Return To The Ballot?

A solitary house fortified with high walls, topped with concertina wire, and guarded by a paramilitary bunker provides the only visibly political footprint after a 70-km journey towards Damhal Hanjipora in Jammu and Kashmir’s (J&K) Kulgam region.

In its front yard flies a National Conference (NC) flag. Inside is a large hall decorated with portraits, where party workers meet. The portraits that stare down from the walls feature the illustrious lineage of the party’s past and present-day protagonists, NC founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah; his son and current president Farooq Abdullah; and the former’s grandson, Vice President Omar Abdullah. Prominently placed alongside is a photograph of Wali Mohammad Itoo, a veteran party leader, former Speaker of the J&K assembly and the man to whom the house once belonged.

Itoo was assassinated by militants at point-blank range on March 18, 1994. The fortified house now belongs to his daughter, Sakina Itoo, a former state minister. At the time of her father’s death, she was a college student pursuing medicine. In 1996, just before the erstwhile state of J&K held its first state assembly election after a gap of nearly a decade, Farooq Abdullah convinced her to contest the polls.  She ended up winning the Noorabad seat in southern Kashmir, a stronghold her father had secured three times—in 1977, 1983, and 1987. During her 2002 campaign, Sakina survived six assassination attempts. She was luckier than her deceased father. In another incident in July 2006, she narrowly escaped a grenade attack as well.

As she walks into the hall, Sakina says that militants have targeted her house at least 13 times over the past 25 years. “But now we are being doubted. We are asked to obtain permissions for all aspects of our political activities, which had never happened in my entire political career,” she says. “This includes separate approvals for speakers, microphones, attending politicians, the audience, and even party flags.”

She recalls an incident on March 18 this year, the anniversary of her father’s death, when Omar Abdullah visited the area. “Government officials even objected to us erecting a stage for his speech,” she says, citing a recent “absurd” rule requiring parliamentary election candidates to confine campaign activities to government-sanctioned locations, a dampener of sorts vis-à-vis political activity, which symbolises the run-up to popular elections. “During the peak of militancy, political activities were not as restricted as they are today,” she points out.

However, Sakina is confident that despite restrictions, this time people might come out in large numbers from all across South Kashmir. “People feel suffocated,” she says. Her area falls in the Rajouri-Anantnag constituency.

In May 2022, the Delimitation Commission merged the distant Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu with those of Anantnag and Kulgam in Kashmir, forming a single parliamentary constituency. Separated by the mighty Pir Panjal mountain range, the new Rajouri-Anantnag constituency has 18 assembly segments and serves a diverse electorate of 1.4 million voters. Native Kashmiris make up nearly half of this voter base, while Paharis and Gujjars constitute 28.5 per cent and 21.5 per cent, respectively. The constituency is connected solely by the historic Mughal road, which remains closed for over six months due to inclement weather.

This time, former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti is contesting from this constituency, while the NC has fielded Gujjar leader Mian Altaf. Former chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad withdrew his candidacy and has announced that he will not be contesting in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Historically, the constituency has been a stronghold of Mehbooba, the president of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Since its establishment, the PDP has exerted significant influence in South Kashmir. However, following the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 and Mehbooba’s arrest for nearly two years, the party experienced large-scale defections, with defectors forming the Apni Party, which is being dubbed the “BJP’s B-team” by both the NC and the PDP. The Apni Party has fielded Zafar Iqbal Manhas as its candidate from Rajouri-Anantnag, abstaining from fielding candidates in other constituencies.

The PDP now faces a fierce battle for its survival. Mehbooba says New Delhi “dismantled her party into pieces” because she opposed the Central government’s move to abrogate Article 370.

On April 16, Mehbooba dressed in a green abaya matching the green of her party flag, made a significant political statement. She chose to hold her first roadshow in the once militancy-hit Wachi area of Shopian. Aware of the changing political situation in South Kashmir, where local residents have been heeding boycott calls from separatists over the years, Mehbooba urged people to step out and vote. With key separatist leaders such as Yasin Malik being imprisoned in Tihar jail and Syed Ali Geelani having passed away, separatist politics is not expected to influence the elections for the first time. Separatists political parties have virtually vanished from Kashmir's political landscape. However, the challenge for regional parties is to convince people to reach the polling booth to cast their ballot.

In the village of Shopian Tukrwangam, Mehbooba invoked memories of darker times, when people feared the ikhwanis (counter-insurgents) as much as they dreaded the J&K police task force. “Those times didn’t last; this time won’t either. In Parliament, I will voice our collective aspirations and concerns. They (BJP) are after our land, jobs, and honour. If you remain silent today, if you choose not to vote, the very land you stand on today might not be yours tomorrow. You don’t need to resort to stones or guns; your power lies in your voice and your vote,” she said.

In Budgam, an NC banner hangs on the outer wall of the house of Aga Syed Ruhullah, the party’s Srinagar candidate. This constituency, now encompassing the districts of Shopian and Pulwama, was expanded in the controversial 2022 delimitation. However, other parts of the area sport no political symbols, not even a single festoon.

Ruhullah hails from a prominent political background and is the son of Aga Syed Mehdi, a distinguished Kashmiri political and Shia leader. Mehdi was assassinated in a powerful improvised explosive device (IED) blast on November 3, 2000, an attack attributed to militants by the police.

Soft-spoken Ruhullah has been very vocal against the abrogation of Article 370, calling it the “collective humiliation of Kashmiris”.

Seated inside his home with visitors regularly dropping in to meet him, Ruhullah says that he never felt that his seniors or the party were uncomfortable with his views. Widely respected across the political divide, he is perhaps the only NC politician who has been seeking a collective response from the political class against the abrogation of Article 370 and has openly made a call for unity.

In contrast to other leaders, the PDP’s candidate from Srinagar, Waheed Para, prefers a more personal approach with door-to-door campaigning. Every morning, he leaves Srinagar for the districts of Pulwama and Shopian in South Kashmir to meet voters directly. Despite facing significant challenges in his personal life in recent years, before the abrogation of Article 370, he was a youth icon who was praised for his activities by the likes of then Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

But Para’s fortunes changed on August 5, 2019 with his arrest. On November 25, 2020, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) booked him under terrorism charges. Although a special NIA court granted him bail on January 9, 2021, he was immediately re-arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) by the J&K police’s Counter Intelligence (CIK) wing and held at the Joint Interrogation Centre (JIC) in Kashmir for months before being shifted to Central Jail Srinagar.

On May 25, 2022, after 18 months, the J&K and Ladakh High Court granted him bail in the terror-related case, citing the prosecution’s evidence as “too sketchy” to deny him relief. By then, his father, who was battling cancer, was at a critical stage. Para was not allowed to travel out of Kashmir to see his ailing father who was at a Mumbai hospital.

In his political speeches, Para questions whether the time for boycotting polls has passed. Like Mehbooba, he urges people to vote to safeguard the identity, culture, and existence of Kashmiris.

Meanwhile, in Shopian, along the historic Mughal Road, youngsters step out in the open to play cricket on a sunny spring day. When asked if they would vote, they smile. One youngster steps forward, saying he would make a decision on voting day itself. His quiet resolve and refusal to reveal his political card mirror the attitude of several lakh voters in the Union Territory, which has begun to worry the region’s politicians ahead of the forthcoming 18th Lok Sabha polls.

Naseer Ganai in Kulgam, Shopian and Budgam

This appeared in the print as 'A Return To The Ballot?'