Omar Abdullah's Limitations as CM and 4 Other Takeaways From J&K Elections

Omar Abdullah will become the next CM of Jammu and Kashmir. 

(Photo: PTI)

Omar Abdullah, the vice-president of the National Conference (NC), is all set to become the first chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir ever since the former state was demoted to the status of a union territory in 2019.

Having fought an election characterised by shrill rhetoric against the Centre, Abdullah on 8 October surprised the public by striking a conciliatory note when he batted for a “healthy relationship with the Union government” and stressed the need to keep the issue of the reinstatement of Article 370 — a key poll plank for his party — “aside for a moment.”

Abdullah also appears to have been cognisant of the demand to assuage the voters in Jammu so that they “do not feel that this is not their government.” 

What may further compound the problem for Abdullah is that his government will be tied by the structural constraints that come with a union territory system. It will essentially be a regime that is subordinated, in many ways, to the federally hand-picked lieutenant governor (LG). 

As The Quint reported before, Section 53 of the J&K Reorganisation Act already confers the LG with the kind of powers that even the Legislative Assembly does not have. Defining the discretionary powers of the LG, Section 53 entitles the Council of Ministers headed by the CM to aid and advise the LG “except in so far as he is required by or under this Act to act in his discretion or by or under any law to exercise any judicial or quasi-judicial functions.”

This means that in any matter on which the LG claims discretion, his decision will be final.

In addition to this, the Union Home Ministry notified the J&K (Second Amendment) Government Business Transaction Rules, 2024 earlier this year in July, further outlining the power-sharing arrangements between the LG and elected ministers of the state. 

The amendment gave sweeping powers to the LG over ‘Police’, ‘Public order’, ‘All India Service’, and ‘Anti Corruption Bureau’, as well as on matters concerning the transfers and posting of administrative secretaries and cadre posts of All India Services officers. The LG also enjoys wide-ranging powers on matters concerning the appointment of the advocate general, approving or denying prosecution, prisons, and forensic science laboratories. 

Even in cases (state list) where the J&K assembly will have jurisdiction, the proposed bills will still have to await the LG's approval before they are enacted into law. Section 38 of the J&K Reorganisation Act empowers the LG to block a bill even when the assembly passes it for the second time — something that even the governors in other Indian states cannot do.

These sweeping powers also extend into the domain of finance with Section 67 of the Act necessitating the creation of a “consolidated fund” in withdrawals, which can only take place as per the rules framed by the LG.

Aware of these limitations, Abdullah appears to have been making overtures to the LG. “I will make every effort to ensure that the incoming government works for smooth relations both with the LG and the Union government,” he said. “We need to have coordination with the Centre. As many issues of J&K can't be resolved by fighting with the Centre.”

To this end, he also seems to have, at least for now, abandoned his promise to pass a resolution in the assembly rejecting the abrogation of Article 370 — something that is going to cost him a lot of political goodwill inside J&K.

With a controversial start like this, Abdullah will have a lot of firefighting to do.

A Special Election Verdict

With a verdict so stark along religious lines, it is likely to exacerbate tensions between the two regions, especially at a time when Jammu is increasingly becoming vulnerable to a spate of militant attacks. The sense of being abandoned is likely to deepen further.

The other big group, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which has given J&K two high-profile chief ministers, has been reduced to three seats. And accounting for 45 percent of the total number of candidates, the Independents — who were being viewed as part of the Centre’s strategy to diminish the vote share of major local leaders arrayed against the BJP — have also performed poorly. 

“People have expressed their disapproval of the changes that were brought to the region in 2019,” said Noor Ahmad Baba, a Srinagar-based political scientist who formerly taught at the University of Kashmir, referring to the revocation of Article 370. “The disruptive factor (independent candidates) has been neutralised. People have made a clear and concise choice. But this clarity is not any political party’s achievement. Kashmiris have always been identity conscious.”  

For the past five years, the BJP has tried to reorganise the entire political landscape of J&K through several radical measures.

It redrew the electoral constituencies to give more heft to the Hindu-dominated Jammu region. It doled out a fresh batch of political carrots with the hope of cultivating a long-term support base of its own. To that end, it reserved seats for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the legislature.

The Union government enfranchised up to two lakh refugees from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as new voters, and also extended reservation programs to include the Pahari-speaking people spread across the mountainous districts of Pir Panjal. 

Together, these measures targeted a patchwork of communities across the social and religious tapestry of J&K. The reshaping of political structures also saw the number of nominated members to the assembly going up from two to five (to be appointed by the LG himself). This was likely to have been a part of a last-ditch effort to blunt the ascent to power of an entirely Kashmir-based party. 

In Kashmir, however, the Modi government deployed sticks, crippling dissenting forces at all levels, dismissing government employees on the charges of sedition, outlawing religious organisations for allegedly supporting terrorism, allowing strict laws like the UAPA and the PSA to run rampant, and more. More interestingly, the Centre appears to have given tacit approval for multiple new power centres to emerge as a countervailing force against the political stranglehold of the NC and the PDP.

The release of maverick politician Sheikh Abdul Rashid who won the Parliamentary seat in North Kashmir earlier this year, or the participation of independent candidates associated with the banned Islamist group, the Jamaat-e-Islami, was also seen in this light, as a ploy to cut the regional parties to size.

In light of this far-reaching political engineering program that J&K has witnessed, the election results have given us four key takeaways. 

Using Independents as an Electoral Strategy Failed

Around 365 of the 908 candidates contesting in the assembly polls were Independents. Most of these were jailed politicians or civil society members incarcerated under charges of supporting or financing terrorism.

During the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Sheikh Abdul Rashid known as 'Engineer' Rashid, a political loner from North Kashmir, won his seat in a landslide, defeating Abdullah. This happened on account of Rashid’s continued detention which his sons pivoted his political campaign on.

The issue of arrests is a highly emotive subject in Kashmir. Hence, Rashid could win with a record tally of more than four lakh votes. 

This unexpected triumph unleashed a crowd of aspirants for power who envisioned replicating similar victories for themselves in the assembly polls, hoping (mistakenly so) to have their detentions quashed. Among them were Sarjan Ahmad Wagay, a key convener of 2016 protests in the aftermath of militant leader Burhan Wani’s killing; Aijaz Guru, the brother of the convicted militant Afzal Guru, and more. Also in the fray were the members of the Jamaat. 

But, as the results came in, only seven Independents emerged victorious, four of whom were anyway former NC deserters, disgruntled with their party over ticket allocation. They are now returning to the party, likely to take the INDIA bloc's tally to 53. 

If anything, the experiment of fanning a wave of Independents turned out to be highly self-defeating for the BJP as is evidenced in the case of Dr Rameshwer Singh in Bani constituency, Jammu. Contesting as an Independent, Singh defeated the BJP’s Jawan Lal with more than 2000 votes, inflicting damage to the saffron party in its own heartland.

Similarly, of the 36 seats Rashid’s re-energised party contested, it won only one. The candidates associated with the Jamaat lost bitterly. Only Sayar Rishi, who was contesting against the Communist Party of India (Marxism) in Kulgam district could put up a formidable fight, swinging neck and neck with CPIM veteran MY Tarigami throughout the counting, but eventually losing by more than 7000 votes. 

The 'Proxies' Have Not Been Able to Deliver Either

Launched in the winter of 2020, just as J&K was reeling under a political crackdown, the J&K Apni Party (JKAP) was raised from scratch, with its architects harnessing support from politicians deserting the PDP, including former minister Altaf Bukhari, in the aftermath of the collapse of the coalition between the PDP and the BJP in 2018.

The JKAP had hoped to reconcile regional political aspirations in the Valley with the realities of a ‘new Kashmir’ that was supposed to leave its past behind and embrace the post-370 reality with more verve and conviction. Similarly, former Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who launched his own party [the Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP)] after his fallout with the Congress, was expected to win enough seats that the BJP could take advantage of.

But neither were able to deliver anything. Instead, they lost miserably.

Bukhari even ended up losing his own constituency, Channapora, with a margin of more than 5000 votes to the NC. Adding insult to injury, one of Bukhari’s key leaders, Ghulam Hassan Mir, lost from his traditional stronghold of Tangmarg by a margin of 4191 votes.

Sajad Lone, beset by accusations of being party to the BJP’s electoral game-plan in Kashmir (he strongly refutes it), could retain only one seat, Handwara in North Kashmir. He couldn’t open his account in any other constituency and worse, even lost Pattan (with a slender margin of 603 votes), where predominantly Shia Muslim voters were expected to cast ballots in favour of his candidate Imran Raza Ansari. Instead, they chose the NC’s Javaid Riyaz Bedar. 

The History of Aligning With BJP Decimates PDP

The PDP was carved out of what were once the still-powerful vestiges of the Congress party in the erstwhile state. Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, as influential point person of the Congress party in J&K, has had a very important role to play in ensuring that the Union government continued to keep the “refractory” NC in check, first under Sheikh Abdullah and then under his son Farooq. Later, at the turn of the 20th century, the PDP was plucked out of thin air so that it could pose a challenge to the NC’s monopoly over the electoral politics in J&K. 

After the party’s alliance with the BJP broke down in 2018, a bulk of 28 MLAs, including Imran Raza Ansari, Haseeb Drabu and many more, began deserting the party.

Many experts had already predicted the PDP to perform badly given the public outrage over its decision to ally with the BJP in 2014. Even its star campaigner Iltija Mufti, former CM Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter, couldn’t win in the party's bastion, ie, Bijbehara. The party could only secure three seats; Kupwara in North Kashmir, Pulwama, and Tral in the south.

The only consolation is the victory of Waheed ur Rehman Para, who is a popular youth leader with a mass appeal. His rhetoric about his “wrongful” arrest at the hands of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) strikes a chord with young voters. 

“Essentially, the political quest of the Kashmiris and the BJP are in continuous dialectical opposition,” said Saleem Rashid Shah, an independent researcher from Baramulla town. “Everything that Kashmiris stood for was undone by the BJP in 2019. Giving BJP access to Kashmir’s power corridors has cost the PDP dearly.”

The assembly election results, Shah added, prove how counterintuitive the decision (allegedly done at the behest of the Modi government) was to break up the PDP in 2018. “If the division of votes was a strategy that the BJP was relying on in Kashmir, then the PDP that should have been its best bet. Had it kept the party the way it was, perhaps, it would have stood some chances of winning. The BJP must be regretting its decision,” he concluded, laughing. 

Delimitation Couldn’t Work Its Magic

The controversial delimitation plan that saw the Modi government award six new seats to Jammu and only one to Kashmir was an attempt designed to unsettle the traditional electoral arithmetic. In addition to resizing assembly seats, the Delimitation Commission also annexed parts of the Pir Panjal region in Jammu with Anantnag in Kashmir, with a long trail of snow-bound massif separating them from each other. 

This was conceived with an idea of playing two sets of electorates with totally different political aspirations, against each other. As a complimentary measure, the Centre gifted the region’s Pahari-speaking communities out-of-turn reservation benefits by bringing them into the fold of the STs. The award expanded the total quota allocations in J&K to 70 percent, infuriating those young voters championing the cause of ‘open merit’ in both Jammu and Kashmir. 

The BJP was hoping that this sort of a rearrangement would galvanise the Paharis, who are a majority in the Pir Panjal region, to rally behind it. But the NC outperformed the BJP by fielding Mian Altaf, a highly revered leader among the Gujjars and some Paharis, earlier in May during the Lok Sabha polls, generating a momentum in its favour. Altaf had won the Lok Sabha seat, securing more than five lakh votes. 

That momentum appears to have survived until the assembly polls, with the NC-Congress alliance (now including the Independents who returned on 9 October) sweeping seven of the eight constituencies across the Pir Panjal region. The BJP even lost Nowshera, from where it had fielded its star campaigner Ravinder Raina. He lost to the NC by a margin of 7819 votes. 

At the same time, however, the BJP won five of the six seats it had awarded to Jammu, and also increased its total seat share across the union territory by 3.2 percentage points. Yet, the attempt to leverage delimitation to skew the electoral calculus decisively in its favour could not happen.

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