Kashmir: Why Did New Political Fronts Struggle in the Lok Sabha Elections?

Voters wait in a queue at a polling station to cast their votes for the fourth phase of Lok Sabha elections, in Downtown, Srinagar, Monday, May 13, 2024.

(Photo: PTI)

The Election Commission's data shows that in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the candidates fielded by the Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP), the Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP), and the Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference (PC) failed to secure even one-sixth of the total valid votes polled in their respective constituencies.

Regional parties like the National Conference, the People's Democratic Party (PDP), and Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party, have emerged as the dominant forces in the Kashmir Valley.

The voter turnout in Jammu and Kashmir in the Lok Sabha polls stood at 58.46 percent — the highest in a parliament election in the last 35 years. The parliamentary segments of Srinagar, Baramulla, and Anantnag-Rajouri recorded voter turnouts of 38.49 percent, 59.1 percent, and 54.84 percent respectively.

The Lost Security Deposit

89 out of 100 candidates in the region failed to secure 16.67 percent of the total votes in their constituencies, resulting in the forfeiture of their security deposits.

Ghulam Nabi Azad’s candidate from the DPAP, Ghulam Mohammad Saroori, got just over 40,000 votes from over 11 lakh polled in the Udhampur Lok Sabha constituency (3.56 percent), which is the home seat of former Congress  party leader. His party contested three out of the five seats in Jammu and Kashmir — Udhampur, Anantnag-Rajouri, and Srinagar.

Azad, who left the Congress party in 2022 due to differences with Rahul Gandhi, failed to garner votes for his party’s candidate. He had unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Udhampur seat on a Congress ticket. Saroori even lost in the Inderwal assembly segment (Kishtwar district), where he had previously won three consecutive assembly elections.

There is little for DPAP candidates Muhammad Saleem Paray of the Anantnag-Rajouri seat and Amir Ahmed Bhat of the Srinagar seat to celebrate, as they received only 25,440 votes (2.47 percent) and 15,104 votes (2.24 percent) in their constituencies, respectively

JKAP candidates Muhammad Ashraf Mir and Zaffar Iqbal Manhas got 9.77 percent votes in Srinagar and 13.86 percent votes in Anantnag-Rajouri.  People Conference's Sajjad Lone also lost badly against independent candidate Engineer Rashid, getting 16.76 percent of the polled votes, saving his deposit with just about 900 votes.

The regional parties, on the other hand, performed well and secured the lion’s share of the vote. Among the key contestants, the Jammy and Kashmir National Conference’s Aga Ruhullah Mehdi achieved the highest vote share, with 52.85 percent in the Srinagar seat.  In Anantnag-Rajouri, the JKNC’s Mian Altaf Ahmed secured 50.85 percent of the votes, while in Baramulla, Engineer Rashid received 45.69 percent.

Former Chief Minister and Jammu and Kashmir National Conference candidate Omar Abdullah garnered 25.94 percent of the votes in Baramulla, and former Chief Minister and the People's Democratic Party candidate Mehbooba Mufti got 23.40 percent of the vote share in Anantnag-Rajouri. Notably, sensing defeat, the BJP decided not to contest any seats in the Kashmir valley.

Attempt to Dislodge Traditional Parties

With the impending assembly elections, the BJP appears to be struggling and the goal of having a "Hindu chief minister" remains elusive. 

Political pundits in the valley argue that it will be difficult to dislodge the traditional parties in Jammu and Kashmir because the BJP is still seen as a “villain” in the Muslim-majority region, as depicted in their performance in the parliamentary elections.

Zafar Choudhary, a political analyst and journalist, says that the people didn’t pay heed towards any propaganda. “This was part of the BJP's political engineering to get people from different traditional parties and create new fronts so that the votes get divided and the regional parties get dislodged. But the people did not let that happen,” said Choudhary who is the editor of The Dispatch.

"This election has proven to be a mass rejection of defectors and the entire process of creating new fronts has been discredited,” he added. 

Sunil Sethi, the BJP's chief spokesperson in Jammu and Kashmir, told The Quint that its main aim was to ensure the defeat of the top political leaders of the valley and they successfully managed to do it.  He said the BJP won both the seats from Jammu and supported those parties in the valley who were in a position to defeat the NC and the PDP.  It is pertinent to mention that both former chief ministers of the erstwhile state, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, lost the elections. 

Sethi further added that the two seats that NC were able to win were on religious lines and not political.  It is true that the National Conference candidate, Aga Ruhullah Mehdi, who won the Srinagar-Budgam seat, is a Shia leader and has huge followers in the community.

Similarly, Mian Altaf Larvi, who won the Anantnag-Rajouri seat, is a prominent figure among the Bakarwal and Pahari communities. He is the son of  Mian Bashir Ahmad Larvi, a renowned religious and spiritual leader in the Gujjar community.

Noor Mohammad Baba, a retired professor of political science at the University of Kashmir, told The Quint that post abrogation of Article 370, the BJP tried its best to discredit regional political parties and create “alternative narratives” and "new political fronts" but that has not worked so far.

With the assembly elections around the corner, the BJP appointed Union Minister of Coal G Kishan Reddy as the poll-in-charge in J&K. The Supreme Court has directed the Election Commission to hold the elections by September 2024.

(Auqib Javeed is a Srinagar-based journalist. He tweets at @AuqibJaveed. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)