Lone Battle or a Bigger Game Plan? Behind NC’s Solo Stride in J&K Elections

Amid heavy political realignment, the Valley’s oldest party is likely to emerge as a key contender in the polls.

Perhaps confident that its electoral performance would be better this time around, the party is adamant about not fighting the polls jointly with its allies over the three seats it won in Kashmir.

(Photo: Vibhushita Singh/ The Quint)

A lot is happening in Jammu and Kashmir ahead of the Parliamentary Elections 2024 which will be the first electoral exercise since the scrapping of Article 370 nearly five years ago.

On 20 February, Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the erstwhile State – his second since 2019 – breathed a fresh tempo into J&K’s slow churning political mill. On the heels of the PM's visit, the government has also unveiled plans to deploy around 635 companies of Armed Forces in the UT in the run-up to the polls.

PM Modi said that he was glad that the Union Territory was "getting freedom from dynastic politics,” taking a swipe at the regional heavyweights like the National Conference (NC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP). He said that the people in J&K "had to bear the brunt of dynastic politics for decades. They are only concerned about their families, not about your interests, your families.”

With the Lok Sabha elections around, politicians across the spectrum in J&K are trading similar barbs as the political mood heats up. 

Row Over Seat-Sharing

The controversy started last week when NC President Farooq Abdullah said that his party will be fighting elections on their own and not jointly with the other regional and national level political groupings of which NC is a part. "As far as seat-sharing is concerned, I want to make one thing clear, the National Conference will contest on its own,” he told reporters during a press conference.

The statement sparked a political row after Abdullah’s opponents accused him of betraying his allies. The NC is part of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), which was formed to reestablish J&K’s lost autonomy, as well as of the INDIA Alliance at the Centre.

Immediately after the debacle over Farooq’s comments, his son and the former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah came out with a more detailed response, saying that the NC would contest the three parliamentary seats in the Kashmir division while "informally discussing” seat-sharing arrangements over two seats in Jammu. 

NC’s Electoral Conviction

There are five parliamentary constituencies across J&K. Three of them (Srinagar-Budgam, Baramulla-Kupwara, and Anantnag-Rajouri) are in Kashmir, while two (Jammu and Udhampur) are in Jammu.

Farooq Abdullah won on Srinagar seat during a bypoll in 2017 occasioned by the resignation of former PDP Parlimentarian Tariq Hameed Karra who put papers in protest against the civilian killings by the security forces amid the 2016 uprising.

The turnout in the bypoll was 7.14 which was the lowest ever in 30 years. He later won that seat again in the 2019 Lok Sabha that saw a 14.43 percent turnout. The NC romped home the other two seats also, while the two seats of Jammu were bagged by the BJP.

Perhaps confident that its electoral performance would be better this time around, the party is adamant about not fighting the polls jointly with its allies over the three seats it won in Kashmir.

In his statement, Omar affirmed that his party “was a member of INDIA alliance and continue to be a member of INDIA alliance. On the seat-sharing idea though, he asserted that “the seats that will be discussed are those that are held with BJP, “ adding that, “we are firm on that position.”

BJP’s Measures in J&K Ahead of Elections

J&K is readying itself for the polls amid a complete reconfiguration of power structures in the UT in the aftermath of the revocation of Article 370.

Through mechanisms such as the Delimitation that resized the electoral seats in numerous ways, the BJP-led Centre has complicated the traditional political calculus.

The Delimitation Commission awarded 6 seats to the BJP stronghold of Jammu, raising its tally to 43. Only one seat was allocated to Kashmir, triggering allegations of gerrymandering.

Further, the Commission lopped off tribal-dominated areas of Rajouri and Poonch from the Jammu Lok Sabha seat and assigned them to the Anantnag constituency in Kashmir. That has muddied the picture further still as the Anantnag seat will now include regions on the other side of the Pir Panjal mountains, "where the voting is guided by a whole different set of political and social imperatives."

Additionally, with the passage of the recent bill granting Schedule Tribes (ST) status to the Pahari-speaking population of J&K, the BJP hopes to lure the ethnic groups as a means to cut into the voter base of traditional parties.

The move to enfranchise an estimated 20,000 families from the West Pakistan refugees, who hardly have a love lost for Kashmir-based parties, is another significant political manoeuvre that will definitely play into BJP’s arithmetic.

NC Re-Emerging as a Force To Reckon With

Political analysts told The Quint that this change on the ground situation has also coincided with other dynamics where the regional parties like the PDP are growing organisationally weaker in relation to the NC which is re-emerging as a strong political force. 

Amid heavy political realignment happening, the Valley’s oldest party is likely to emerge as a key contender in the forthcoming Parliamentary and Assembly elections.

"PDP has been battling with a stream of desertions since 2018. That automatically puts the NC in a stronger position,” explained Zafar Choudhary, Senior Editor and Author. Choudhary said that the new electoral arithmetic considering the redistricting of the Anantnag seat puts the parties in J&K in a peculiar situation that can cut both ways.

All three Kashmir-based Parliamentary constituencies together account for a total of 55 Assembly segments. The NC appears confident it will retain the two Lok Sabha seats of Baramulla and Srinagar which it had won in 2019.

As for the Anantnag seat whose constitutive units stand reconfigured, and which has previously been a stronghold of the PDP, the NC has been reluctant to share seats with the former. Any single party which wins all these three Lok Sabha seats is also likely to form the next government when the Assembly Elections take place. It is this why the NC is keen on securing this seat on its own.

“People do repose some trust in Mehbooba Mufti. But they know that if the NC and the PDP contest separately, it will be BJP’s win,” Choudhary said. “Already, South Kashmir traditionally witnesses very low turnout (last Lok Sabha elections saw 9 percent turnout) compared to Rajouri where turnout tends to be 70 percent. Any lower participation in Kashmir will give BJP a clear benefit in Jammu where it will bank on Hindu voters, and the Paharis who were given ST status recently.”

The other reason is that after the Supreme Court decision upholding Article 370’s removal, the political purpose of groups like the Gupkar Alliance has become irrelevant as a result of which the traditional parties like NC are turning back to electoral politics.

“In fact, the NC made a distinction between what role the PAGD should have vis a vis Article 370 and contesting elections,” said Rekha Choudhary, a political scientist and a former professor at the University of Jammu.

Political Slugfest in J&K

One of the most emotive topics this election season has been the loss of Article 35A, which granted protection on land ownership and government jobs in the UT.

After the SC’s decision upholding Article 370’s abrogation, the mainstream political discourse in J&K has swung to the opposite side: They now insist on not bringing back Article 370, but on promulgating rules that will safeguard the land and jobs against the non-local competition.

That appears to be a safe bet as politicians calculate that New Delhi would be less infuriated by such demands, voiced as they are also by the people in Kargil and Ladakh, where the Centre has shown willingness to parley.

The Congress defectors such as Ghulam Nabi Azad, a former CM who formed a new party two years ago, have even promised to reinstitute the 2001 Roshni Act, a controversial legislation that was invalidated by the JK&L High Court in 2019. The law sought to regularise the "encroachments” over the government land in return for a nominal fee that would be channelled to fund power projects in J&K. 

A Divided House

Ever since the big decision of August 2019, Kashmir’s political landscape has witnessed a rejig of sorts. With the rise of new political formations like the Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) and J&K Apni Party (JKAP), analysts believe the more fissiparous the political scene in the Valley becomes, the likelier will be the scenario from which BJP hopes to benefit electorally.

The traditional politicians, on the other hand, have hardly been able to put up a joint face. Last week, Devender Singh Rana, an NC defector who is now with the BJP, accused Abdullahs of consorting with the BJP in 2014 over the position of CM.

Later Azad of DPAP also levelled similar allegations accusing the father-son duo of holding "clandestine meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah at night to avoid public scrutiny.”

PDP, the putative ally of the NC as part of Gupkar Alliance chimed into the debate, with Iltija Mufti, former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter, tweeting "night rendezvous” in what looked like an implicit endorsement of Azad’s claims.

This fractured political scene is likely to worsen further as the political opponents of Abdullahs are trying to pivot their campaigns on the rhetoric that the NC is determined to join hands with the BJP in the forthcoming Assembly elections. But political analysts believe it is too early to predict that scenario.

“I do not think the NC is going to open the alliance question before there are Assembly elections,” Rekha Choudhary, the Academic said. “They have been very pragmatic so far.”

(Shakir Mir is an independent journalist. He has also written for The Wire.in, Article 14, Caravan Magazine, Firstpost, The Times of India and more. He tweets @shakirmir. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)