Lok Sabha elections have never mattered much to the local politics of Jammu and Kashmir, which has usually revolved around separatism, Kashmir’s special constitutional status and its unique identity. With personalities taking primacy over democracy, parliamentary polls have mainly meant three things in the past: rehabilitating a loyalist, removing an irritant and grooming the children of the powerful.
For the first three Lok Sabhas, the candidates did not have to face any contest as the first direct elections took place only in 1967. Of the three prime ministers (till 1965, the head of government in J&K was known as prime minister) and seven chief ministers who have ruled J&K, eight have had a term in Parliament, with seven of them having at least one tenure in the Lok Sabha. Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, who succeeded their fathers as chief ministers, have enjoyed multiple Lok Sabha terms. One premier’s brother and another’s wife had two terms each. Maharaja Hari Singh’s son, Karan Singh, who had an 18-year-long stint as the constitutional head of state from 1949 to 1967, got four terms in Lok Sabha from Jammu’s Udhampur constituency.
While in Parliament, six MPs (now only five) carry hardly any potential of influencing national policy on Kashmir. With this background, the general public, particularly in the Kashmir valley, still remains disinterested, but for the political parties, these are going to be the most decisive elections, yet. “For the first time since 1971, when Shameem Ahmed Shameem, a journalist of humble means, defeated former prime minister Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, this year’s elections evoke some interest,” said political scientist Noor Ahmed Baba. Developments of the past few years, including the abrogation of J&K’s special status, downgrading of the state into two Union territories, unprecedented hounding of separatists who earlier enjoyed a degree of legitimacy, the absence of legislature and the prolonged spell of Central rule have recast a new political and social landscape which awaits a fresh beginning.
WHAT DO THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS MEAN?
The elections that the people of J&K have been waiting for since the fall of the last popular government in June 2018 have to be for the assembly. But despite delimitation and three rounds of electoral reviews, the Election Commission has not blinked. On December 11, 2023, when the Supreme Court validated the Centre’s decision announced on August 5, 2019, to abrogate Article 370, the court also asked for assembly elections to be held before September 2024. This gives people a definite date to look forward to an elected government. Whose government? These elections will decide that.
“The upcoming elections set the stage for assembly elections by catalysing a churn in the political parties,” said political economist and former minister Haseeb Drabu. For the BJP, this is a historic opportunity to lay the foundation for a dominant position in the assembly elections. Its leadership makes no secret of its ambition to form a government of its own in India’s only Muslim-majority state. For regional parties, particularly the National Conference (NC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), it is seemingly the last battle to protect J&K’s Muslim majority character, the hallmark of Kashmir’s politics. For the general public, restoration of statehood and early assembly elections are central issues.
On February 20, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched development projects worth Rs32,000 crore from Jammu. It was the launch of the BJP’s high pitched poll campaign in which the prime minister targeted the NC and the PDP leaderships. On the occasion, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha said post the abrogation of Article 370, J&K received investment proposals worth Rs90,000 crore. He also listed education, skills training and employment initiatives. “Pakistan-sponsored militant commanders have been wiped out, while shutdowns and stone-pelting are things of past,” said Sinha. The death count in militant violence has come down drastically. This has been acknowledged even by the worst critics of the regime, such as Omar Abdullah (see interview). Ordinary Kashmiris have openly talked about this. “Article 370 was a wall against development which the government has demolished to build a new era of economic prosperity,” said Modi. He said the BJP was set to get 370 seats as the “nation’s blessings for integrating J&K with the country”.
Life goes on: Bakers prepare bread at their shop in Srinagar | AFP
Modi, however, did not say a word about the restoration of statehood and a definite date for assembly polls. “Roads and buildings are an ongoing process, but the people expected the prime minister to announce restoration of statehood,” said Raman Bhalla, working president of the J&K unit of the Congress. “From one of the most empowered states in the country, we have been relegated to the status of a Union territory,” said People’s Conference leader Sajad Lone. Sajad is one of the key contenders for the Lok Sabha from Baramulla constituency, where his party’s candidate was a close second in 2019. “MPs from J&K have always been of ornamental value. This has to change,” said Sajad. “It is very important to go to Parliament and talk to the country from there. We need a dialogue with our country.”
Irrespective of political affiliations, regional and religious faultlines, the loss of statehood is one issue that is common for all. Even for the Dogras of Jammu, who form the core constituency of the BJP, the issue of statehood is quite emotive as it was the Dogra king Gulab Singh who laid the foundation of the state in 1846. Karan Singh, who has supported Modi on the revocation of J&K’s special status, said he regretted that the state his forefathers built had been reduced to a Union territory.
Despite this seething anger, which is further compounded by absence of any special economic opportunities, the Dogras are still solidly behind the BJP. “We got nothing from the reading down of special status, but this disempowerment of Kashmiris offers a unique pleasure,” said Harpreet Singh, an entrepreneur with businesses in Jammu and Kathua. Religious nationalism is another factor that makes BJP a confident player in the two Jammu seats.
NEW REALITIES
The upcoming elections are happening on a new political landscape. The Lok Sabha constituencies have been reconfigured through delimitation, the first such instance in decades. At 8.69 million, the voter count is up by 7.7 lakh since the last Lok Sabha elections. The BJP has consistency in its ideological approach, commitment to its slogan and also something to showcase. The regional parties are in a spot. Said veteran journalist Mohammad Sayeed Malik, “Major players in the mainstream have been robbed of the platform that hinged on the special constitutional status.”
Alert forever: Marine commandos (MARCOS) patrol the Jhelum river near Srinagar | PTI
Since the Supreme Court has endorsed the revocation of Article 370, regional parties are finding it difficult to go back to people with the old appeal of vote for restoration of special status. They have expectations from the people to deliver a verdict on the constitutional changes. On the special status, Parliament and the Supreme Court have spoken, but the people are yet to speak up. “There is an eerie silence,” said Baba. “The Kashmiri voter may be silently readying to express his views through vote against the BJP.” Zafar Iqbal Manhas, a former legislator and founder of the Apni Party, agreed with him. “For more reasons than one, people are expected to vote in big numbers. Kashmiri forgets nothing and forgives nothing when it comes to his unique political identity.” The security situation is better, but Manhas said there was no winning streak or reconciliation. Kashmiris, he said, felt conquered, humiliated and overpowered. “They will speak their mind through their vote,” he said.
Drabu, who has given up active politics, expects a surprise. “There is a sense, as they say in cricket, of letting the bat speak,” he said. Kashmiri leaders are pinning their hopes on voter turnout, which is anyone’s guess. Since the breakdown of democratic institutions in the 1990s, the turnout has always remained poor in Kashmir. In the last five Lok Sabha elections, the overall percentage has settled down at 20 per cent less than the national average, but that figure is arrived at by combining the numbers of the Kashmir valley with that of the Jammu region.
Looking at the valley alone, the turnout has been: 19 per cent in 2019, 31 per cent in 2014 and in 2009, 15 per cent in 2004 and 17 per cent in 1999. In all these elections, the combined turnout in the two Jammu constituencies has remained above 70 per cent. With this turnout, the valley may actually help the BJP win the trans-Pir Panjal seat and get halfway into the valley.
The poor voting percentage in the past was the result of genuine voter apathy coupled with boycott calls by separatists. “Any call for election boycott is highly unlikely this time,” said Baba. The security forces look clearly determined to not allow any militant threat to hold. “We might witness polling at a higher scale than in the past,” said PDP leader and former minister Naeem Akhtar. In 2019, the NC secured 7.89 per cent of the total polled votes in J&K to win three seats; the BJP, on the other hand, polled 46.39 per cent to win an equal number of seats—two in Jammu and one in Ladakh. Similarly, ten years ago, the NC won three seats with 19.11 per cent votes, while the BJP polled 18.61 per cent, but did not win any seat. “Parties and leaders will have to look beyond the traditional advantage in poor turnout,” said Lone. Irrespective of who wins, a higher turnout shall be a major victory for Modi as a reflection on the improved security situation and better quality of democracy.
THE GAMBLE IN THE MIDDLE MOUNTAINS
“People and ideas influence events, but geography largely determines them, now more than ever,” said American writer Robert D. Kaplan in his book, The Revenge of Geography. The Pir Panjal mountain range has historically defined the political temperament on both sides of the geographical divide. The first delimitation in the 1960s packaged three Lok Sabha seats on the north of this divide in the predominantly Muslim Kashmir valley and two seats on the south side in Hindu majority Jammu.
Unsettled field: (From left) Former chief ministers Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti with People’s Conference leader Sajad Lone | PTI
Since 1977, when the NC returned to electoral politics, the regional parties—with the exception of the 1996 elections—have always bagged all three seats of Kashmir. National parties—except in a 2001 byelection—have always won the two seats from the Jammu division. The latest delimitation has carved constituencies in such a way that two absolute seats each have been allocated to the regions and the fifth seat—named Anantnag-Rajouri—cuts across the Pir Panjal range to include three predominantly Kashmiri speaking districts of the valley and two diversely populated districts of the Jammu region. This is where the ultimate battle of supremacy over Kashmir politics will be fought. The party or alliance which wins Anantnag-Rajouri will be better positioned to lead in the assembly elections.
“This constituency could emerge as a bridge between the two regions or change the balance,” said Prof Rekha Chowdhary, who has written extensively on electoral politics in Jammu and Kashmir. Drabu said the trans-Pir Panjal constituency was to the advantage of Kashmir-centric politics. “Wittingly or unwittingly, it has brought south Kashmir and Pir Panjal close to each other which is good for Kashmir’s long-term politics,” he said.
The regional parties are banking purely on the Muslim majority factor and the belief that Muslims would vote against the August 2019 decisions of the Modi government. But the BJP has a better strategy. During the short budget session in early February, Parliament passed an amendment bill to list four new communities as Scheduled Tribes. The list includes the Pahari-speaking people who make nearly half the population in the twin mountainous districts of Rajouri and Poonch. The BJP is hopeful of their support. If at least two of the three parties—the NC, the PDP and the Congress—are not able to cobble up an alliance, the BJP may get to live its Kashmir dream.
HOW ARE THE PARTIES POSITIONED?
For its first 30 years, J&K had single party rule with hardly any space for electoral competition. It was the NC till 1965 when the party merged with the Congress. The NC was revived after the Indira Gandhi-Sheikh Abdullah accord of 1975, making way for the first proper elections in 1977. These two parties dominated the electoral scene till the late 1990s when the BJP made its presence felt in the plains of Jammu, while the Kashmir valley saw the launch of the PDP as the first ever major regional alternative to the NC. Now the NC and the PDP are allies in the Congress-led INDIA bloc.
There are three other local parties with serious stakes in the polls. The Apni Party, headed by Syed Altaf Bukhari who was a minister in the PDP-BJP government, has its roots in the political shakeup of August 2019. In March 2020, when three former chief ministers and hundreds of other leaders were still under detention, the party took off with around two dozen former ministers and legislators, mainly drawn from the PDP, claiming to represent ‘new and emerging realities’. Five days after the launch, party leaders got a meeting with Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi. The Democratic Progressive Azad Party is headed by veteran parliamentarian Ghulam Nabi Azad after he broke away from the Congress in September 2022. These two parties will be contesting all five seats. While their ability to win is limited, both have the potential to significantly alter the nature of the contest. The Jammu and Kashmir People’s Conference, another smaller party in existence for over four decades but restructured in recent years drawing major faces from the PDP and the NC, has its focus limited to the two seats of north and central Kashmir. “New parties set afloat with unconcealed blessings of Delhi are in for their maiden test of strength,” said Malik.
The five regional parties look at each other as secret allies of the BJP. “One significance these elections could have had is dead already,” said Akhtar. “People could have sent a message of united Muslim response to the BJP’s unilateral erasure of the state. This could also have resulted in unintentional Muslim consolidation across the regions. This option has been successfully stamped out by the BJP with obvious local complicity.” Akhtar is hinting at the ‘secret understanding’ some of the regional parties are suspected to have with the BJP.
In two recent interviews, NC chief Farooq Abdullah hinted at the possibility of aligning with the BJP. Farooq, who has been served three summonses by the Enforcement Directorate recently, looks at the PDP with suspicion ever since former deputy chief minister Muzaffar Hussain Baig has begun to warm up to the party leadership. A co-founder of the PDP, Baig was awarded Padma Bhushan in January 2020, while Mehbooba was under detention as part of August 2019 crackdown. His visit to Mehbooba’s residence and his presence later at her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s death anniversary in January are seen by many as events encouraged by the BJP’s interests.
Following Farooq’s statements about the BJP, Azad said the Abdullahs had prior knowledge about the revocation of Article 370. “The Abdullahs meet Modi and Shah in the middle of the night,” he said. “They ask for meetings after 11pm.” Such mutual suspicion is to the advantage of the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections, and the party looks better positioned in terms of its offering, messaging and clarity.