J&K polls: NC, Abdullahs can bask in win, but must keep some lessons in mind

The National Conference (NC) has more than a few reasons to celebrate its stupendous victory in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly polls on Tuesday (October 8), but also many more lessons to learn from the mandate.

The 42-seat win for the NC marks the first time since the 1996 Assembly polls that any Kashmir-based party has come within striking distance of the simple majority mark in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly on its own. NC vice president Omar Abdullah’s own victory from both Ganderbal and Budgam seats is also just the assurance that he needed on his electoral standing after the shock defeat he suffered against Engineer Rashid in Baramulla during the Lok Sabha polls.

Return of Abdullah dominance

To sweeten the deal further, the NC is now set to form a government with Omar returning as chief minister but with a coalition partner, the Congress, that can’t dictate terms to it given the miniscule legislative bloc of six MLAs that the Grand Old Party has secured.

Watch | J&K, Haryana: Surprise upsets, regional shifts, changing politics | Capital Beat

Whether the NC was being magnanimous in victory or simply honest when its leaders, party chief Farooq Abdullah downwards, asserted that the results were “far better than expected” is hard to say. What is certain, though, is that the National Conference’s landslide win across the Valley’s North, Central and South regions has pushed its Kashmiri rivals – the Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP, Altaf Bukhari’s Apni Party, Sajad Lone’s People’s Conference and Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party – out of their respective areas of political dominance making Kashmir look once more like the monolithic political entity that Farooq Abdullah lorded over more than a quarter century ago, and his father Sheikh Abdullah, before that.

Loss for ‘BJP proxies’

Yet, in this massive victory there are also important lessons for the NC and the Abdullahs. A narrative that pervaded the three regions of Kashmir this election was that the people did not want any political party or individual even remotely suspected of being a potential BJP ally voted to the Assembly. The NC’s campaign itself had repeatedly branded nearly all its rivals – the AIP, the Apni Party, the People’s Conference and the Jamaat-e-Islami backed candidates – as the “A, B, C and D” teams of the BJP. Omar also constantly scorched the PDP for its alliance with the BJP in 2014, which had eventually ended in the imposition of President’s Rule that later paved the way for the abrogation of Article 370.

In this backdrop, as reported by The Federal during the campaign, though the voters of Kashmir harboured a visible lack of trust for the NC, itself a past ally of the BJP, and openly expressed their anger at the Abdullahs for their perceived politics of “self preservation”, they also asserted that the party would not dream of allying with the BJP, at least in the near future, after having witnessed the political and electoral fate that Mehbooba had been subjected to in recent years.

Also read: Haryana win, J&K show will silence BJP’s critics, strengthen Modi's hold over NDA

Hardest hit

The results bore out this sentiment of the Valley. If Mehbooba Mufti had crashed out of the Lok Sabha contest in June from Anantnag-Rajouri, her daughter, Iltija Mufti, lost the current polls, her electoral debut from the family turf of Srigufwara- Bijbehara in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district. Among the key leaders ‘tainted’ as BJP proxies in the Valley, Apni Party chief Altaf Bukhari and People’s Conference chief Sajad Lone lost from the Chanapora and Kupwara seats, respectively.

Lone, however, managed to win from the Handwara constituency – the only seat to fall in his party’s kitty – but by a slender margin of just 662 votes while all candidates of Bukhari’s Apni Party were decimated. The PDP too was limited to just the three seats of Kupwara, Tral and Pulwama; not on the strength of the party but of individual candidates or due to the heavy split in votes.

Long journey to revival for some 

In North Kashmir, where till a month ago Engineer Rashid was widely being touted as the kingmaker in the new Jammu and Kashmir government, his AIP managed to just retain his home seat of Langate, where the Engineer’s brother, Sheikh Khursheed, scraped through against his People’s Conference rival Irfan Panditpuri with a margin of 1602 votes. Rashid and the AIP were the hardest hit by the charge of being ‘BJP proxies’ ever since Rashid was released on parole to campaign for his party’s 34 candidates in the election.

For the PDP, AIP, Apni Party and the People’s Conference it is now expected to be a long, long journey for reviving their individual parties and fending off desertions and splits. For the NC and the Abdullahs the challenge may be even greater – to run a government that will be henpecked by the Centre and its nominated Lieutenant Governor at every step of running the affairs of Jammu and Kashmir while delivering on the tall promises they made to the electorate – beginning with the restoration of statehood and seemingly unachievable steps for the restoration of Article 370 – while also retaining political hold on constituencies that have fallen into their lap this election.