J&K polls | Farooq returns as combative Cong-NC alliance takes on nervy BJP

Downgraded from a state to a Union Territory, carved up to exclude Kargil and Ladakh from it, robbed of its constitutionally guaranteed protections under Article 370, and prevented from having an elected government for the past six years, strife-torn Jammu and Kashmir will finally have its Assembly polls in September.

With the Supreme Court-directed deadline of conducting Assembly polls in the restive UT by September 30 this year fast approaching, the Election Commission, on Friday (August 16), announced a three-phase poll schedule for J&K. The elections, the shortest since 2002, will be held on September 18, September 25, and October 1. The results will be announced on October 4, along with the outcome of the Haryana assembly polls.

With the UT having undergone a contentious delimitation exercise in 2022, the polls will witness voting across 90 assembly segments. Until 2014, when the last Assembly polls in J&K were held, the former state Assembly had 87 seats, including four from the Ladakh and Kargil districts, which now constitute the Union Territory of Ladakh.

Effect of delimitation

After the delimitation exercise, the number of seats in Hindu-dominated Jammu region, which accounts for 44 percent of the UT’s population as per the 2011 Census, has gone up from 37 to 43 – or, a 48 percent share in J&K’s Assembly seats. In contrast, the Muslim-majority Kashmir division, which accounts for 56 percent of the UT’s population, has seen an addition of a lone seat after delimitation. The Kashmir region now has 47 seats, a 52 percent share of seats in the rejigged Assembly.

Reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have also been introduced to the J&K Assembly, with nine seats reserved for SCs and seven for STs.

The upcoming elections are expected to be viewed as a referendum on the Centre’s August 5, 2019, decision to abrogate Article 370 and simultaneously snatch away J&K’s statehood.

Centre no hurry to restore statehood

The Election Commission’s announcement of the poll schedule also indicates that the Narendra Modi government is in no hurry to restore J&K’s statehood despite strident demands from the Congress party and dominant regional outfits, Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference (NC) and Mehbooba Mufti’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and campaigns by common citizens for doing so before assembly polls were conducted.

“For the past five years, the Indian National Congress has been consistently demanding that full statehood should be restored to J&K and that assembly elections should be conducted. J&K still awaits full statehood. Recent moves by the Union government have only added to the powers of the LG (Lieutenant Governor, currently Manoj Sinha) there, making mockery of the powers of a duly elected state government,” Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh posted on X.

Demands for restoring J&K’s statehood are expected to gain further momentum as the poll process commences. How the BJP responds to them will undoubtedly also affect the poll outcome, particularly in Kashmir. For the saffron party, however, this is the least of its concerns in the poll-bound UT.

Since the abrogation of Article 370, PM Modi and the BJP have made voluble assertions of restoring peace and normalcy to J&K after “70 years of terror”. Modi has repeatedly hailed Kashmir’s “growth story” post the abrogation; claiming that huge investments were now flowing into the Valley, tourism had skyrocketed, industrial boom was round the corner and a bright future awaited the UT’s citizens.

The Opposition – Congress, NC, PDP and the CPM – have, understandably, dubbed the PM’s assertions as humdrum, pointing at growing unemployment, curbs on fundamental rights, stagnant local economy, a spike in terror incidents that are no longer localised in the Kashmir Valley but have turned into targeted killings of Hindus and non-Kashmiris in the Jammu region and, of course, the long delay in holding Assembly polls.

Opposition on a high

That the BJP, despite Modi’s tall claims about the prosperity of J&K under his reign, refrained from fielding candidates across the three seats of the Kashmir Valley and witnessed a steep fall in its vote share in the two seats of the Jammu region, despite eventually winning both, has added to the Opposition’s ammunition against the saffron party.

Sources in the Congress and the NC told The Federal that the two INDIA bloc parties would carry forward their Lok Sabha alliance into the assembly polls too. The NC is expected to field candidates for a bulk of the seats that fall under the Kashmir division, while Congress will face off against the BJP for most seats in the latter’s stronghold of Hindu-dominated Jammu. The two parties are also likely to spare a seat for MY Tarigami, the veteran CPM leader and convenor of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration who represented the Kulgam assembly constituency between 1996 and 2018.

The Congress also effected changes in the top leadership of its J&K unit late Friday, replacing Vikar Rasool Wani with former Srinagar MP Tariq Hameed Karra as the new PCC chief and appointing former deputy CM and Dalit leader Tara Chand and former MLA Raman Bhalla (both from Jammu region) as working presidents.

Mehbooba's PDP out of favour 

The alliance, however, is unlikely to include Mehbooba’s PDP, which is still viewed poorly in the UT, especially the Kashmir division. It was the PDP that had first enabled the BJP to share power in the erstwhile state when, following a deeply fractured mandate in the 2014 assembly polls, Mehbooba’s father, the late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, had allied with the saffron party to form a government.

Following Sayeed’s demise in January 2016 and a brief spell of suspense over the coalition’s future, Mehbooba went on to become the state’s first woman CM with the BJP as an ally. The alliance, however, collapsed within two years when Mehbooba sacked two BJP ministers who had expressed public support for an accused in the Kathua rape and murder case. Her resignation from the CM’s post in June 2018, paved the way for the Centre to impose Governor’s Rule in the erstwhile state which eventually gave the Modi government its chance to abrogate Article 370 without any resistance from a state government that was now run by the Centre’s handpicked Governor (Satyapal Malik).

Mehbooba’s efforts to find a spot for the PDP in the INDIA bloc’s seat-sharing agreement for the five Lok Sabha seats of J&K had failed earlier this year. The NC refused to yield its claim on the Anantnag seat that Mehbooba previously represented. Though she eventually contested the Anantnag-Rajouri seat as her party’s candidate, she lost to the NC’s Mian Altaf by over 2.80 lakh votes.

Sources say the NC is also opposed to any concessions to the PDP in the upcoming Assembly polls, and the Congress, aware of Mehbooba’s dwindling poll popularity, is unlikely to take her along.

Farooq's surprise re-entry 

The alliance is likely to go along with NC chief Farooq Abdullah as the CM face. The NC chief, a former three-term CM, is the senior-most Kashmiri politician and also heads the PAGD. Despite his indifferent health, the 86-year-old has been the most vocal critic of the Abrogation of Article 370 and an equally strident proponent of restoring J&K's statehood, renewing the public's confidence in the political brass and even, controversially, the restoration of dialogue with Pakistan to ensure long-term peace in the region.

Farooq's surprise move to return to state politics after nearly two decades is meant to maximise the NC's appeal among voters, particularly in the NC strongholds in the Valley. Declaring upfront that he would step down from the post once statehood is restored is also meant to signal that his party wouldn't let the BJP keep the statehood issue lingering.

'Will boost Omar's base'

Farooq's move will also allow his son and former CM, Omar Abdullah, time to strengthen his personal political base. Omar had suffered a shock defeat in the recent Lok Sabha polls from the Baramulla seat against jailed independent candidate Engineer Rashid. The Baramulla result was largely viewed as an outpouring of public support for a wrongly incarcerated Rashid, and many believe it was not a measure of Omar's political standing. The NC, too, feels that Omar's goodwill among voters remains largely intact and that his decision to go along with his father's plan to sit out the upcoming polls will only help his public image and allow him to be among the people, boosting the NC's public outreach.

If the NC-Congress alliance appears almost settled, what would be interesting to see is the coalition, if any, which the BJP builds for itself. Since the abrogation of Article 370, the BJP has tried to co-opt several leaders from the Valley while some others, including DPAP chief Ghulam Nabi Azad, Sajad Lone of the People’s Conference and Apni Party founder Altaf Bukhari, are largely viewed as BJP proxies. Whether the BJP formally enters into an alliance with these outfits or opts to, as it had done during the Lok Sabha polls, tacitly back their candidates in the Kashmir region with the hope of a post-poll union remains to be seen.