The Gupkar Stranglehold

The main players in the elections will be national parties like the BJP and Congress and regional parties like the NC and PDP. There will be several other smaller parties that have emerged in the Kashmir Valley, like the People’s Conference led by Sajjad Lone and JK Apni Party led by Altaf Bukhari. A new surprise in the Valley politics is the rise of a pro-separatist outfit called the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP), led by a mercurial separatist leader Sheik Abdul Rashid, popularly known as Engineer Rashid. Rashid shocked observers of J&K politics earlier this year by winning the North Kashmir Lok Sabha seat of Baramulla, defeating Omar Abdullah, the NC strongman and a towering leader in the Valley’s politics. Since then, speculation is rife that Rashid’s party would emerge as a strong force in the Valley politics through the legislative elections, not good news for the region and the nation.

The BJP, with its stronghold over the Jammu region, will continue to be a formidable force. It has a strong organisational and political presence in almost all the 43 assembly segments in the Jammu region, including Muslim-dominated areas like the Pir Panjal and Chenab Valley. Several prominent Muslim leaders have joined the party in the last few months enhancing its winning chances in 10-odd seats in the region, even in areas where the Muslim votes matter.

The NC is hoping to make a comeback by winning a majority of the seats in the Kashmir Valley. But the party’s ambition was dampened by the defeat of its leader Omar Abdullah in the Lok Sabha elections from a constituency that sends 16 legislators to the assembly. In a desperate bid, the Abdullahs decided to join hands with the Congress, hoping that the INDI Alliance would help them stem the BJP’s surge in Jammu. However, after the departure of Ghulam Nabi Azad in August 2022, the Congress Party has been a lacklustre force in the region. Several of its other leaders have migrated to parties like the BJP.

Far from benefiting by joining hands with the NC, the Congress will have to face the wrath of the people of Jammu and the nationalist elements in Kashmir, besides the people of the country, for this opportunistic alliance. Just a few days before the election, the NC came out with its election manifesto which categorically stated that the party’s first demand would be for the restoration of Articles 370 and 35 A in the Indian Constitution. “The first order of business of the elected assembly should be to make it known not just to the rest of India but to the world at large that the people of J&K don’t agree with what happened to us on August 5, 2019. Then we start undoing what was done to us”, Omar Abdullah said a week ago.

The party’s manifesto smacks of a soft separatist mindset, Kashmiri domination and scant respect for the people of Jammu, especially the SCs and STs. Sheikh Abdullah, its founder, was the champion of the idea of “autonomy” of Kashmir, a dangerous slogan that forced Jawaharlal Nehru to send him to jail in 1953. Again, it was Farooq Abdullah’s government in J&K, that brought the infamous “autonomy resolution” in 2000, trying to stoke separatism in the state.

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government in Delhi had snubbed Farooq Abdullah by rejecting the resolution in Parliament. It is saddening that after two decades the NC manifesto once again talks about autonomy and Article 370. The manifesto also talks about releasing prisoners who were jailed for pro-terrorist and anti-national activities and refers to the famous Shankaracharya Hill in Srinagar as Takht-i-Sulaiman and the adjoining Hari Parvat Fort as Koh-e-Maran.

The Modi government has introduced Scheduled Tribe reservation in the state to provide social justice to Gujjars, Pahadis and other tribes. The NC manifesto wants to “review” all the reservation in the state. It betrays NC’s anti-Jammu streak and throws a challenge at the marginalised sections of the Jammu society like Hindu SCs and Pahadis and Muslim Gujjars and Bakarwals. The Congress Party leadership has to answer if it shares the NC’s soft-separatist and anti-SC/ST political agenda.

The elections will continue Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of freeing the people from family politics and ushering in true democracy through free and fair elections. It was this vision that resulted in the Kashmir Valley sending a Sunni, a Shia and a Gujjar to Parliament for the first time from its three seats, truly representing the rich diversity of the Valley and rejecting the politics of scions. With the BJP continuing to be a strong force in the UT, this election will witness historic results and free people from the stranglehold of Gupkaris.