After 10 years of interlude, and for the first time since its demotion to a union territory (UT) five years ago, Jammu and Kashmir will host the legislative assembly elections next month, in line with the Supreme Court’s directives.
Breaking the announcement on 16 August, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said that the polls will be held in three phases starting 18 September. The elections will conclude on 1 October. With this declaration, the Modern Code of Conduct (MCC) automatically comes into effect in J&K.
But what does this election mean for J&K?
Attempts to 'Restore' Democracy
The erstwhile state has been without an elected government since June 2018 when the Bharatiya Janata BJP (BJP) ended its alliance with the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) amid a worsening security situation.
In hindsight, it was a calculated move to make sure that J&K doesn’t go to polls before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and, post the expiry of Governor’s Rule in December 2018, President’s Rule could be imposed, which was, we later figured out, a key prerequisite for the Modi government’s plan to erase Article 370.
After the annulment of special status, J&K remained under a prolonged political freeze. In 2020, the government conducted the elections for the District Development Councils (DDCs). It was New Delhi’s way of demonstrating that it was committed to gradually restarting the democratic process.
But the issue soon got mired in concerns over what this additional layer of elected representatives (that has no precedent elsewhere in the country) would mean for the democratic structures in J&K. Normally, members to district development boards are elected by sarpanches or village heads across the country.
One of the downsides of electing members to DDCs through a direct vote, as former J&K Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu has pointed out, is building an institution that’s at par with the state assembly. “It is a system,” he wrote, “that has been designed to undermine the legislative assembly of the state, as and when it is resuscitated to life.”
How the modalities of elected DDCs will be squared with those of an elected assembly without precipitating tensions between the two will have to be observed.
BJP Finding It Difficult to Create Space for Itself
The Lok Sabha polls held in J&K earlier this year were a major electoral exercise that actually gave vent to the political frustrations accumulating over the past five years. Not only was the BJP frightened into not fielding any candidate in Kashmir, which, after the delimitation exercise also includes the Pir Panjal region of Jammu, but the parties that were touted to be its proxies were routed.
Instead, it was the National Conference that won two seats in south and central Kashmir. The remaining seat in the north was bagged by the rebel politician Sheikh Abdul Rashid, who is currently in prison under terrorism charges. This created an embarrassing situation for the BJP. Regional politicians on rival terms with the BJP use Rashid’s victory to thumb a nose at the Modi government.
This was despite the fact that the BJP had gone to great lengths to ensure favourable electoral outcomes for itself. Awarding out-of-turn reservation benefits to Pahari-speaking groups as a way to cultivate a new vote-bank in Jammu was one such move.
In this light, it had seemed unlikely to many that the BJP would proceed to hold assembly polls in J&K as the party was wary that the huge resentment over the scrapping of Article 370 would reflect in the results. That’s why the sudden uptick in militancy in the Pir Panjal region of Jammu had provoked concerns that the Modi government would seize the pretext of escalating violence to delay elections.
The Illusion of Democratic Revival
But the latest announcement has assuaged those fears. Yet, the claim that holding elections will strengthen its democracy and put J&K on the track of long-term peace will flounder at the shores of reality.
Firstly, the central government continues to wield enormous meddlesome powers reinforced through a recent MHA amendment which will continue to feed into local resentment. Second, it is likely that once a non-BJP party comes to power in J&K, the Modi government will drag its feet over the question of statehood and its restoration. Third, former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has already issued a statement that his party would table a resolution in the legislature repudiating the revocation of Article 370. The BJP will try every trick up its sleeve to forestall an eventuality such as this.
Whichever party comes to power in J&K in October, it is clear that the National Conference, which had the largest number of assembly-wise leads (34 out of 90) in the Lok Sabha polls, will have the lion's share in deciding how to go about government formation.
These matters alone will continue to keep J&K politics in an incendiary mode for a long time, and once the new government is in place, federal relations will be edged with tension in a pattern similar to Delhi and Bengal. Further, the nature of the Modi government’s engagement with J&K since 2019 has been defined with such a disconnect that locals will always view its intentions with a degree of suspicion.
The J&K administration continues to take decisions that are deeply unpopular with locals such as changes in domicile laws, dismissal of government employees over unproven terrorism charges, making available local resource extraction to bidders from other states, or establishing new liquor stalls.
It is common to hear anxieties about the over-bureaucratisation of governance in Kashmir in the absence of a fully functional and autonomous elected government. Recently, a non-local IAS officer (son-in-law of senior BJP politician Prahlad Singh Patel) tried to “unlawfully” demarcate the land of Fayaz Ahmad, a judge who had ordered his salary to be withheld on account of the officer’s non-compliance with a previous court order. Such cases serve to illustrate the nature of impunity the bureaucrats think they enjoy.
Kashmir is Far From Being at Peace With Itself
Last week, the J&K government launched extensive transfers of police officers just hours ahead of the Election Commission's announcement.
The move drew protests from the National Conference whose general secretary Ali Mohammad Sagar accused the Lieutenant Governor's administration of trying to undermine the integrity of the electoral process as the reshuffle came just moments before the MCC came into effect. The code restricts such transfers in order to prevent the ruling party from having an unfair advantage over state machinery.
Days before the announcement of the election dates, the government also allowed a new Press Club of Kashmir to convene. The previous Press Club, which had a history of advocating the cause of journalists being harassed by the state, was unceremoniously shut down in 2021, and the building was converted into a Police Station.
The new club is helmed by a group of journalists rival to the one that headed the previous club. As one Kashmiri journalist told this reporter, “It looks like the administration wanted to have their people occupy such organisations before an elected government could be in place.”
In the run-up to the poll process, the local administration also arrested several senior lawyers associated with the J&K High Court Bar Association (HCBA). In June, the police arrested Mian Qayoom, who heads the association. Later his nephew, Mian Muzaffar and another high-profile lawyer Nazir Ronga, were also detained under the Public Safety Act (PSA), which is J&K’s harsh preventive detention law.
The crackdown on the HCBA's lawyers came at a time when the association was gearing up for its annual elections. However, the Srinagar district administration prevented that from happening on the grounds that it espoused “secessionist ideology” and provided free legal aid to “anti-national elements.”
The Carrot-and-Stick Policy
A more surprising development, however, was the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court's decision to quash the Enforcement Directorate (ED) money laundering case against Farooq Abdullah. The case pertains to the alleged misappropriation of funds meant for the J&K Cricket Association (JKCA) of which Abdullah was a president between 2001 and 2011.
Although the case was being investigated (since 2012) and charge-sheeted (in 2018) by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the ED filed another case in 2019 amid a larger crackdown on the mainstream political parties after J&K’s special status was scrapped. The “clean chit” to Abdullah is being interpreted by some Kashmir-based analysts as a move to incentivise the National Conference to come to a post-poll understanding with the BJP.
The NC, however, dismissed this. “The only party we will contemplate aligning with is the Congress party,” one party leader told this reporter.
Another development that can significantly alter the dynamics of the electoral process is that the banned Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami might participate in the electoral process for the first time since the outbreak of militancy in 1989. As per several reports, the group has agreed to take part in the elections if the MHA ban is reversed.
Second, there are reports that the current MP for North Kashmir, ‘Engineer’ Rashid, who is lodged in Tihar jail, will be released or shifted to the Valley ahead of the elections. If that happens, his Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) will make sure it galvanises a large section of voters in the four districts of the north as it did during the Lok Sabha elections.
That will further fracture the electoral landscape in the Valley, something that erodes the National Conference’s chances of winning with an absolute majority.
A Desperate Bid With Unforeseen Ramifications
All these developments reveal the wide range of machinations that the BJP is trying to deploy to make sure that its authority remains entrenched; that alternative power centres continue to remain besieged; and that electoral outcomes do not turn completely against its favour.
“The idea appears to be that there should be a fragmentation of votes,” explained Noor Ahmad Baba, retired professor of political science at Central University of Kashmir.
“Obviously we have seen in Engineer Rashid’s case how voters can be quickly mobilised away from their traditional voting patterns. Add to that the Jamaat factor which would mean that voters either vote for a Jamaat candidate or someone who has been a Jamaat sympathiser.”Noor Ahmad Baba, speaking to The Quint
The nature of the BJP’s political engineering in J&K seems to be reckless and foolhardy because it is hardly reflective of the spontaneity that should ideally define the political process that Kashmir needs. Instead of calming the frayed nerves of the people in J&K, it might as well inflame them.
(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.)
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