It’s colder than in Oct ’02, this time politics is to blame

But tomorrow, it’s the Baramulla-Kupwara constituency and the surface calm can be deceptive. Two years after Assembly elections in the state saw a record turnout and people fighting fear and threat to vote, the enthusiasm is missing. In the dusty Kupwara market, gone are the poll buntings and symbols which had changed the landscape in October 2002.

Still, there were last-minute attempts today to keep voters at home. Militants fired a rocket on a building near Sopore, a landmine rocked Bandipora town. No one was injured but that’s of little comfort.

Kupwara was where the People’s Conference proxy candidates, during the Assembly elections, generated a wave of excitement among voters never seen before. But this time the People’s Conference has openly called for an election boycott.

That makes hardware shop-owner Ghulam Mohammed Malik angry. ‘‘We defied calls for the boycott of Assembly polls by the Hurriyat and militants and came out to vote, thinking that PC would help end the Kashmir problem. Now we’re told our participation in the elections will send wrong signals to the international community. It’s plain hypocrisy.’’

However, if voters stay away, it won’t just be because of the boycott calls, by the PC, by separatist hawks like Syed Ali Geelani or JKLF chief Yasin Malik. It’s also because the state government hasn’t delivered on many of its promises.

Lounging in a local restaurant at Handwara, Abdul Hamid Malik, an academic, who voted in assembly polls, says he won’t this time around. ‘‘I don’t want to waste my vote. What have they done? Take our MLA, Ghulam Mohiudin Sofi, who won from Handwara, he promised us better roads, electricity and safe water. Just go around and see the condition.’’

Sofi, the forest minister in Mufti’s government and the only PC proxy to win the Assembly seat in 2002, blames politics, not performance for this. ‘‘We will stay away,’’ says Sofi, ‘‘because the Congress-PDP government has failed to put up a joint candidate. They have put up their own candidates and we have decided to remain equidistant from both.’’

Still, the voter turn-out in Kupwara and border areas like Gurez, Karna and Uri is still expected to be decent but in Sopore and Baramulla, where separatist sentiment rules, the Hurriyat poll boycott call is likely to work.

There are six candidates in the fray, but the fight will revolve around the sitting National Conference MP, Abdul Rashid Shaheen, People’s Democratic Party candidate, Nizam-u-din Bhat, and veteran Congress leader, Ghulam Rasul Kar.

That is another sign that the kind of politics that is common to other parts of the country — with its accompanying ennui — has come to the Valley. But for bickering, it would have been a tight contest between the NC and the PDP. It’s just that the Congress refused to stand by its coalition partner.

Result: the NC is smiling, the voters are unimpressed. Everybody blames politicians. But for the heavy presence of the police and the paramilitary forces, these election scenes could have been played out almost anywhere in India. And the Valley does not know whether it should celebrate that fact or look plain bored.

Meanwhile, police have arrested dozens of separatists, incluing Democratic Freedom party chairman Shabir Ahmad Shah and People’s League chairman Shiekh Aziz who were trying to organise anti-poll rallies across the Valley. — with Mir Ehsan.