On Jammu and Kashmir street: talk of polls with some fingers crossed as EC team arrives tomorrow

One big reason behind this change in mood among parties is the Centre’s decision to disempower the elected Assembly by vesting complete authority of law and order on the Lieutenant Governor and letting him take the final call on all key decisions, including appointments.

“It is impossible to say anything for sure on an issue that is surrounded with so much suspense and uncertainty,” former Chief Minister and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) President Mehbooba Mufti told The Indian Express. Her colleague in the party and former minister Naeem Akhtar summed it up. “The public representatives, at best, would be the interlocutors between the people and the LG. They can only take the petition from the people and hand it over to the LG.”

J&K has been without an elected Assembly since June 2018 when BJP walked out of a coalition government with the PDP in the state. The constitutional changes that revoked J&K’s special status, split it into two, and downgraded the state to a Union Territory on August 5, 2019, had always fuelled apprehensions that the Centre doesn’t want to let go its hold on J&K.

While former Chief Minister and National Conference Vice President Omar Abdullah says it would be difficult for the Centre to justify postponement of an election mandated by the Supreme Court, he is clear he won’t contest this time and also not become the CM if his party came to power. “I am not going to sit outside the waiting room of the Lieutenant Governor and ask him, Sir, I want to change the DG, please sign the file,” he said. Mehbooba Mufti too has said she plans to stay away from electoral politics for a while.

While the BJP has been blaming dynastic politics — by the Abdullahs and the Muftis — to be the root cause of the Kashmir problem, the party leadership’s efforts to prop up an alternative in the form of new political parties and leaders has come a cropper. For instance, the new political parties formed after August 5, 2019 — Altaf Bukhari’s Apni Party and Ghulam Nabi Azad’s Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) which are seen as the proxies of the BJP — couldn’t secure a lead even in one Assembly segment in the Lok Sabha election.

Seen as a key stakeholder in the border state, the Army, is wary and points out that no new crop of young leaders — as expected by the Central leadership — has emerged over the last five years. Hopes that new leaders would emerge from District Development Councils (DDC) polls held in J&K for the first time in 2020 have been belied. “The old political set up (National Conference and the PDP) persists. Leaders, whom the Centre is banking on like Altaf Bukhari, have no mass following,” said an official in the security establishment, pointing out that terror incidents have sharply dropped only because of a hard clampdown.

While the L-G is trying his best to move the needle on governance, people’s connection with bureaucracy is limited.

With the BJP’s proxies failing, the Centre is now experimenting with a new idea — to push the banned Jamaat-e-Islami into the electoral fray. The Centre hopes that Jamaat’s entry and a possible alliance with non-PDP and non-NC political forces would dent the prospects of the two mainstream political parties. An official in the security establishment said, “This is like playing with fire.” He said Engineer Rashid’s win has spooked many. “Imagine what will happen if Jamaat, Altaf Bukhari, etc come together…,” he said.

The sources said the Army wanted the current set-up to remain in place for sometime since “the security agencies have a free hand to deal with anti-national elements”. In an interview to The Indian Express, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha said the J&K police and the administration would continue with their action against the Jamaat and its leaders. “It is difficult to say, given their past activity…,” he said, when asked if the ban on Jamaat would be revoked.

For the separatists, who have been completely isolated by the Centre, these elections don’t mean much. “As long as they (New Delhi) control everything, this election doesn’t mean much,” Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq told The Indian Express. “Fine, whosoever wants to govern let them govern. We will welcome good governance but our focus is not on governance but on resolution… People feel alienated, angry and sadly that anger is turning into hate. We can wait for Pakistan, but you need to first talk to people, listen to them, engage with them,” he said.

Be that as it is in the Valley, the BJP has started campaigning aggressively across the Jammu division. “We will definitely form a government on our own. We expect to get between 35-38 assembly seats in Jammu division and get a double figure in Kashmir Valley,” said Sunil Sethi, a senior advocate and BJP’s chief spokesperson in J&K.

The party has chalked out a massive public outreach programme as it prepares its election manifesto. “The teams of our senior leaders will be visiting different districts to interact with a cross section of the society and ascertain their views on varied issues confronting them and the UT, and bring them in the party’s manifesto as per their aspirations,” he said.

Of the 286 sammelan (meetings) planned by BJP’s different wings across Jammu division, the party workers have already held 235 during the last one month, said former minister Bali Bhagat. “We are working aggressively at the grassroot level. After finishing these sammelan in Jammu division, we will move towards Kashmir,’’ he said.

Riding high on populist measures, coupled with Pakistan’s attempts to revive terrorism in the otherwise peaceful Jammu division where over 50 soldiers have been killed in different terror attacks since 2021, the party hopes to get majority during the polls and form the government on its own. “We have no plans to have a pre-poll alliance so far,” said a senior BJP leader when asked about the prospects of BJP having ties with J&K Apni Party.