South Kashmir campaign set to end, PDP spots green shoots, Jamaat struggles to get off ground

Mufti was referring to the 2002 Assembly elections, when the party came to power for the first time, in coalition with the Congress. The credit for the PDP’s rise to power, just three years after it was founded by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in 1999, went clearly to South Kashmir, which gave the party 10 of its 16 seats, falling across the districts of Anantnag, Kulgam, Shopian and Pulwama.

In the subsequent Assembly elections of 2008, the PDP got 12 seats, followed by 11 in 2014.

However, 10 years – and an alliance with the BJP to form the government in 2014 – later, the PDP is struggling to retain its hold. South Kashmir’s 16 seats vote in the first phase on September 18, with the campaign wrapping up on Monday.

Even in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, held months after the Pulwama attack that left 40 CRPF personnel dead, the disillusionment with the PDP was obvious. While Mufti took the lead in eight out of the 16 Assembly segments, the low voter turnout in traditional PDP areas resulted in her loss to NC first-timer Hasnain Masoodi, a retired High Court judge.

In the recent Lok Sabha polls, the PDP shrank further, with Mufti losing again – from the newly crafted Anantnag-Rajouri seat. Of the 18 Assembly segments that are part of the new seat, Mufti could secure a lead in only three this time, while the NC-Congress’s Mian Altaf (the winner) finished ahead in 15 segments.

Rival NC, which was almost wiped out in South Kashmir once, has now re-established itself, while the Jamaat-e-Islami’s presence in the electoral fray, even if limited, could hurt the PDP as it is targeting the same vote that the party used to command.

PDP’s hopes

The party is counting on the fact that the Assembly elections, happening after 10 years, are different, with both its voters and cadre energised at the renewal of political activity, especially after the Lok Sabha pollls. This will “show results in the Assembly elections,” says a PDP leader.

Popular PDP youth leader Waheed ur Rehman Para, the party’s driving force in South Kashmir, adds: “On the ground, there is no wave for any party. The NC may have some votes but that is for individual candidates and not the cadre. And many of their leaders are upset over not getting tickets.”

Para, who also lost in the Lok Sabha polls, from Srinagar, and is contesting the Assembly elections from Pulwama, adds: “Our strength is our cadre. Our leaders left us, but the cadre is intact.”

According to him, the PDP struggled in the Lok Sabha as it was not able to reach the people and its cadres because of “a government crackdown”. “Even on (Lok Sabha) election day, our workers were picked up to send a message to the people,” he claimed. “Despite that, people voted for us.”

Para says government pressure was also the reason the PDP saw a depletion of its ranks after the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019. Mufti, who was picked up in the mass arrests ahead of the Centre’s move, spent among the longest periods in detention of all leaders of mainstream parties.

In the time since, seven PDP MLAs from South Kashmir have left. Other senior leaders like Abdul Rehman Bhat and Mufti’s uncles Sartaj Madni and Farooq Andrabi have either taken a backseat or announced a break from active politics.

Now the PDP is banking on, what it calls, “pro-people” measures of its previous governments. Addressing a rally in Pulwama, Para raises a slogan, “Yeli yi Mufti (When Mufti will come to power)…”, and the crowd finishes it, “teli chali sakhti (then suppression will be erased)”.

In her speeches, the former CM continuously talks about her government’s decision to withdraw 12,000 FIRs registered against protesters and the disbanding of the police Task Force.

NC’s growth

With the PDP’s “soft separatism” appealing to South Kashmir where militancy has been the most active, the NC had been slowly pushed to the margins here, with the Congress emerging as the PDP’s main – if marginal – rival in the region. But the NC and Congress have never won more than two-three seats each in the region in the past few elections.

(This is not counting the seat of Kulgam, where CPI(M) leader M Y Tarigami has been holding on for four terms.)

In these elections, four of the eight seats that the Congress is contesting in the Valley as part of its alliance with the NC fall in South Kashmir.

An NC leader from South Kashmir refutes the claim that the party had been “wiped out” of the area, saying they are still the PDP’s main rival. “In electoral politics, if you leave space open, someone will fill it. The PDP allied with the BJP despite the fact that it sought votes against the BJP, and this left a window of opportunity open for us… It would be a tough fight between the two of us this time.”

Senior PDP leader Naeem Akhtar, however, argues that the space which became available in the absence of democratic competition in South Kashmir was taken over by militants and separatists, resulting in near total election boycott. In the 2019 parliamentary polls, there was only 8% polling.

“To that extent, it (the NC reviving in south Kashmir) is a welcome sign,” Akhtar says, who also says that “the PDP’s absence was forced”. “. But despite that we are reviving.”

This time, as the election campaign gathered pace, the PDP’s old cadre that had gone silent could be seen on the ground, with the youth in a majority and its election rallies gaining in size. Some leaders who had switched sides after 2019 have returned to the party, with many more seeking to do so.

Jamaat factor

The PDP’s rise in South Kashmir has long been credited to the fact that the Jamaat kept out of elections after denouncing the 1987 Assembly polls, when it contested under the banner of the Muslim United Front. Those elections are widely believed to have been rigged in favour of the NC-Congress alliance, and were the immediate spark for militancy.

This time, after expressing its desire to contest the elections and seeking unsuccessfully that the ban against it under the UAPA be lifted by the Centre, the Jamaat is backing 10 Independents. Four of them are standing in the South Kashmir seats of Pulwama, Zainapora, Kulgam and Devsar.

While the Jamaat has stirred the political scene in Kashmir, both PDP and NC leaders believe it won’t be a factor. “This leadership of the Jamaat (its eight-member panel that decided to contest the elections) isn’t acceptable even to Jamaat cadres,” says a senior NC South Kashmir leader. “The fact is that the original Jamaat cadre didn’t vote in the past and they will not vote even today.”

A former Jamaat leader rejects that its supporters rallied behind the PDP in its absence. “As an organisation, we never endorsed any party nor asked our cadres to vote against one… On the ground, some of our cadres or sympathisers might have voted for a party, but that was their own choice,” says the leader.

Meanwhile, apart from a big rally in Kulgam, the Jamaat campaign has failed to get going, with a large number of its own cadres clearly sceptical about the party’s move.