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Journalism of Courage
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar recently indicated that polls would be held in Jammu and Kashmir soon, saying that since the electoral process, involving delimitation, revision of electoral rolls and identifying booths, is complete, elections must be held. However, he stopped short of giving a timeframe for the polls, saying they will be held “keeping in mind several factors including weather and security conditions”.
While political parties questioned the EC’s silence on a commitment on the matter, they have already hit the ground in the expectation that the polls could happen any time this year.
“What does he (CEC) mean by weather and security (as factors)? Does he mean the political weather? If it is so, only the ruling party can decide which political weather suits them,” said M Y Tarigami, the CPI(M) leader and spokesperson of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), an amalgam of four mainstream political parties formed to seek restoration of J&k’s special status.
“As far as security is concerned, even in the hardest of times, the elections were not postponed. The government is claiming that the security situation has improved. The Home Minister is on record to say that violence has come down an normalcy has returned. Who else will certify it to the Election Commission than the Home Minister of this country,” Tarigami added.
“We are raring to go,” said Imran Nabi, spokesperson of the National Conference. “We are prepared for the elections any time. We are connected to the grass-roots and our leaders and workers are on the ground meeting the people.”
The NC announced its constituency in-charges for all the 47 Assembly seats in the Valley in November last year. Since then, the party’s constituency in-charges have been regularly visiting areas falling under their Assembly segments, to interact with the people.
While the NC’s focus has been on Assembly segments, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – which is facing a bigger challenge especially after its near total disintegration – is focused on rebuilding.
“As a party, we are not looking at elections particularly. When the elections come, we will fight, but that is not what we are looking at,” senior PDP leader Naeem Akhtar said. “We will have to fight to prove to the world what has been done to us on August 5, 2019, is not acceptable to us. We are not going to give electoral space to the BJP uncontested.”
The party feels that the worst is over for it and they are once again up as a formidable electoral force. “The kind of destruction we faced is past now. Many people wrote our epitaph after the mass defection of our senior leaders,” Akhtar said. “We have rebuilt from scratch and our president Mehbooba Mufti has set a new narrative, the narrative of resistance. We are sure things (for us) won’t be as bad as has been written.”
The party is right now focusing at the panchayat level. “We are not sure which elections would come first. Right now, we are in process of identifying the candidates at the ground level – that is panchs and sarpanchs,” said a party leader. “As far as the Assembly elections are concerned, we have started consultation with our workers”.
The political leaders say since people in the Valley are indifferent towards electoral politics, it was a hard task to rekindle their interest in democracy. “We are right now focusing on door to door meetings than public rallies,” said the PDP leader. “It was not easy to motivate the people, given their indifference. But the series of draconian orders pushed through by the Centre have made people realise that there is no alternative to democracy and this has made our work a little easier.”
The Congress hopes its election campaign will get a kick-off with the Bharat Jodo Yatra entering J&K on January 19. “All the leaders are busy with it,” said a party leader. “For us here, it has dual purpose. It will kickstart our campaign. In addition, we have been already organising public meetings and rallies in different parts of the Union territory.”
The one party that is sure of polls in the near future is the BJP. The party has started its campaign in the Valley with the slogan ‘One Booth, 10 Youth’, borrowed from the PDP’s 2013 election slogan.
“The BJP is always in election mode,” said the party’s media in-charge for Kashmir, Manzoor Bhat. “Our workers have been working at the booth-level since last year. We have been telling our workers that elections can happen any time and they should be ready. We have already appointed constituency presidents, pana pramukhs, shakti kendras. We have identified 10 youths in every booth and each of them will identify 10 more youths.”
