“Apki beti, apki behan, aaj aap ke pas aayi hai kyunki ek Mahabharata ka yudh honey ja raha hai, aur jiska purey ka pura control aap logon ke pass hai (Your daughter, your sister has today come to you because a battle of Mahabharata is going to take place and its outcome is entirely in your control),” says the BJP’s Kishtwar Assembly seat candidate Shagun Parihar while addressing a rally in the Dachhan area’s Kiyar village. Campaigning for the Kishtwar seat, which goes to polls in the first phase on September 18, ended Monday. While pitching the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly election as a battle between those who have “looted shops” and “unleashed atrocities”, and those who want to “bring peace, security and prosperity” to the people, the 29-year-old candidate tells the audience it is up to them to decide who takes the reins of power in the Union territory. More than 10 km from the nearest motorable road at Sounder, Kiyar is the last village in Kishtwar district’s Dacchan area and does not have any mobile phone connectivity, or a primary health centre even today. It has only a high school, housed in a two-three room kachha structure, but students have no choice but to walk three hours each way to Sounder to study beyond Class 10. According to those close to Parihar, she had not considered contesting the Assembly polls until August 26, when the BJP announced her as its Kishtwar candidate. Parihar, a research scholar with an MTech degree in electrical power systems, is currently pursuing a PhD and preparing for the J&K Public Service Commission examination. Parihar’s father Ajit Parihar and his brother Anil, the then BJP state secretary, were killed by suspected militants near their home in 2018 ahead of the panchayat polls. The killings had put the Kishtwar town on edge, prompting authorities to impose a curfew. As word of the killings spread, people in large numbers rushed to the local hospital and clashed with police who tried to stop them. By fielding Shagun Parihar, the BJP intends to woo both the majority Muslim and minority Hindu communities in the district, which bore witness to militancy from the mid-1990s to early 2000s. Her uncle Anil, considered a moderate voice in the BJP who had some support among Muslims, had been active in Kishtwar politics even at the height of the militancy, especially during the BJP’s Doda Bachao Andolan in 1990s that saw senior party leaders from the Centre face arrests in Jammu. On Monday, at a rally for Shagun Parihar in Kishtwar district, Union Home Minister Amit Shah spoke of the Parihar brothers while remembering those who “sacrificed their lives fighting terrorists”. “Today, I remember all those martyrs and promise you that iss aatankwad ko itna neechey dafan karengey ki kabhi bhi bahar na aa paye (We will bury terrorism so deep in the ground that it will be unable to raise its head again),” he said. On Saturday, at a BJP rally in Doda, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had referred to Parihar as “beti (daughter)” and said that she and other BJP leaders are determined to completely wipe out terrorism in J&K. In the early 2000s, the J&K Police had declared Kishtwar “militancy-free”, though the district saw communal riots in 2013. Terrorism and her personal experience with it have been a core part of Parihar’s campaign. “I don’t want anyone to undergo the pain I faced,” she says, in a reference to the killing of her father and uncle. Without naming her primary opponent, the National Conference’s (NC) Sajjad Ahmad Kitchloo, she tells a gathering in Dachhan that there are people who “always divide society, loot shops, disrespect people and unleash countless atrocities on them”. “They gave stones in the hand of some and guns to others, and always talked of breaking the country,” she says. While leaders talk of development during elections, her opponents, she claims, talk of releasing militants and restoring Article 370. “When militants come out of jails, no one knows how many of our brothers and sons they will take to join militancy, destroy their houses and families,” she says, asking the crowd if they want these issues to return. Development, too, features in her campaign messaging, with Parihar promising road connectivity, and education and health facilities in remote areas. “At a time when people are talking of landing on the moon, you people don’t even have mobile phone connectivity in Dachhan,” she says, adding that if elected, the BJP will raise the wages of Village Defence Guards and Special Police Officers (SPOs), and grant the eldest woman of each family Rs 18,000 per month. Among the seven candidates in the fray against her are NC’s Kitchloo, a two-time Kishtwar MLA and former Minister of State for Home; the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) former MLC Firdoos Ahmad Tak; and the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Sumit Kumar. Since 1962, the NC has been the dominant party in Kishtwar, having won the seat six times, while the Congress has won it three times. In 2014, the BJP won Kishtwar ahead of Kitchloo and Tak. In her election affidavit, Parihar has declared moveable assets worth Rs 2.4 lakh and immoveable properties, including agricultural land and a shared ancestral home, worth Rs 60 lakh.
