Of Kashmir’s 48 Women Candidates, Somiya Sadaf Stands Out

Of the 48 women candidates contesting in the fourth phase of the District Development Council polls in Kashmir on Monday, one woman stands out.

Somiya Sadaf, 42, is from Muzaffarabad, the capital city of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. She is contesting as an Independent from the Dragmulla area of frontier Kupwara district.

Currently a resident of Kupwara district, Somiya did her graduation from Lahore in humanities and her masters through distance learning from Moulana Azad University, Hyderabad.

If elected, Somiya will be the first person from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir to do so. The election commission found her nomination papers valid. Her husband, Abdul Majid Bhat was 16 years old when he crossed the LoC for arms training in 1990 like hundreds of Kashmiri youth.

However, in Muzaffarabad, he pursued education and later completed his graduation from Lahore and did his masters in English from National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad. He married Somiya in Muzaffarabad in 2002.

In June 2010, the couple returned to Kashmir via Kathmandu, under the then Chief Minister Omar Abdullah government’s scheme of return and rehabilitation. In 2010, the then Chief Minister Omar Abdullah announced the rehabilitation policy. According to the policy, former militants could return from four entry points – Poonch-Rawalakot, Uri-Muzaffarabad, Wagah (Punjab) and Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi. However, most of them took the Nepal route to return home under a tacit understanding between both the governments of India and Pakistan.

Somiya expressed hope that she would be elected a DDC member. She said she has worked at the grassroots-level in the areas under JKSRLM (the State Rural Livelihood Mission) and has an understanding of poverty in the area. She said she was asked by people to contest the polls and she respected their wishes. “I am hopeful that I will win. My campaign was a silent one. I told people that our priority should be that we should get rid of poverty and create job avenues,” Somiya told Outlook. She said politics was new to her but she took the plunge anyway. “I plunged into it like Dabang. I found the response of the people very good. My whole campaign was about poverty alleviation. I have been working for a long time with self-help groups. I know what people require,” she said.

“I am satisfied with my whole campaign and people’s response,” she added. Her election symbol was computer. “I selected computer as my election symbol as everyone these days understands what computer means,” she said. She said her rivals from other parties didn’t speak against her.“Because I didn’t oppose anyone. I only told people to elect a good candidate, who could help you to create jobs and take out the area from poverty,” she said.

The current District Development Council elections in Jammu and Kashmir are the first polls in J&K since the abrogation of special status granted to the erstwhile state under Article 370. The DDC elections will be held in eight phases till December 19. The results will be declared on December 22. So far, four phases have completed.

The first phase of the DDC polls was held on November 28 and it saw a turnout of 51.76 per cent. The second phase on December 1 recorded 48.62 per cent turnout. The third phase saw 50.53 per cent voter turnout with Kashmir recording an average turnout of 31.61 per cent and Jammu recording an average turnout of 68.88 per cent.

In the fourth phase today, the turnout was 50.08 per cent. Three south Kashmir districts, Pulwama, Shopian and Kulgam, recorded the lowest poll percentage.

State election commissioner K.K Sharma said a total of 364,527 voters voted at 1,916 polling stations. Jammu division recorded an average voter turnout of 69.31 per cent. Kashmir Valley recorded 31.95 per cent turnout with Kulgam recording 8.73 per cent, Pulwama 6.70 per cent and Shopian 1.9 per cent.

On October 17, the Centre government amended the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayati Raj Act, 1989, for holding direct elections to the DDCs. Under the new rules, each district has been divided into 14 territorial constituencies by the respective deputy commissioners for electing their representatives, who will then among themselves elect the chairman and vice-chairman of these councils. In the eight phases, there are 280 DDC constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir.

Even since 2018 when the PDP-BJP government fell, Jammu and Kashmir has been under governor’s rule.