The soldiers alighted from the buses parked outside Ramunshi Bagh police station in Srinagar at 5:45 am in the morning on 18 September (Wednesday). It was dark and cold, with the full moon glowing brightly in the backdrop. The men started amassing on the main street in Srinagar, leading towards the Chinar-lined Sher-e-Kashmir cricket stadium where Prime Minister Modi gave his address on Thursday.
Security preparations were afoot a day before the first phase of the highly anticipated assembly elections. A total of 24 seats across the union territory - 16 in Kashmir and eight in Jammu - were in the fray on Wednesday.
The Srinagar leg of PM Modi’s J&K tour saw him addressing the voters in Kashmir where he appeared to caution them against the alleged perfidy of the Valley’s three major mainstream political parties. “They made J&K’s politics their personal fief. Except for their own family members, they don’t want anyone to come forward,” Modi said, in an apparent reference to the National Conference (NC), the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and the Congress party.
He added that their monopoly over politics had disillusioned the youth over the years and estranged them from democratic ideals. “They (youth) reasoned that, whether we vote or not, only these three families are going to come (to power),” he said.
Projecting the Union government's direct rule over J&K as highly rewarding for its people, PM Modi exclaimed, “How much has changed! Campaigning is going on till late in the night," he said. “People are celebrating democracy. A ray of trust has kindled among the people that their vote will usher in a right change.”
In Pulwama, Elections Seen as a Repudiation of BJP
But voters crowding outside the polling booths on Wednesday did express their desire to bring change — one that envisioned keeping the BJP out and bringing more accountable local representatives to power.
Wednesday’s voting took place across the four districts of South Kashmir, which was once an epicentre of militancy and anti-India demonstrations. On the day, voters huddled outside the polling booth in Kakapora town of Pulwama as early as 6:45 am when the voting was yet to start. Braving the frigid autumn chill, they rushed in as soon as the gates were thrown open.
Voting at a booth at 7 am in Kakapora town, Pulwama.
(Photo: Author)
“It is a big day for us,” said Abdullah Ahad (60), a farmer. “We are voting after 10 years. During all this time, we have been harassed a lot by the authorities. For us, it is the scrapping of the special status that is the big matter. We are going to elect someone who amplifies our voice.”
At a voting station in the Naira village of Pulwama, Ahmadullah Bhat (47), a local farmer, echoed similar sentiments. “The government has started seizing pasture lands from people over the last few years,” referring to a land recovery drive that the J&K administration initiated last year to reclaim what it termed as the encroachment of government land.
The drive led to protests following which it was halted. Bhat described the political climate of Kashmir over the past five years as “suffocating” in which the people faced consequences for speaking out against the administration. “Even our religious clerics could not speak freely on our pulpits. I am here to change all this.”
A 75-year-old female voter named Raja Begum, a former headmistress of a school in Pulwama, said that she longed for the time when people in Kashmir had more freedom. “We could go out without these people being everywhere,” she said, pointing irritably at the gun-wielding soldiers manning the booth. “I want that time back.”
Voters Upset Over Arbitrary Detentions
The Pulwama seat is going to see a three-way contest between the PDP’s Waheed ur Rehman Para, the NC’s Khalil Bhandh (who is also equally strong), and a Jamaat-e-Islami backed independent candidate, Talat Majeed.
Both the NC and the PDP have accused the central government of allowing Jamaat cadres to participate in elections as independents to fragment the Muslim vote in Kashmir between different parties.
They question why an equally high number of independents are not contesting in Jammu (where the BJP has won in a landslide in the past), and that if the BJP was comfortable with an Islamist group taking part in the polls, then why was the Union Home Ministry not revoking the ban.
During the last assembly elections, the Pulwama constituency was won by Bhandh, who later defected to the NC. But this time around, the voters seem to be enthused by the participation of 36-year-old Para.
Voters in Naira village in Pulwama.
(Photo: Author)
Para was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in February 2020 under charges of terrorism. He was released later but detained again in November later that year. In January 2021, the NIA court granted him bail, holding that the offences he was accused of were not made out. But he was rearrested in a different case until his final release in May 2022.
Since then, Para has positioned himself as being wronged by the system and unlawfully arrested in the same way as thousands of Kashmiri youth in the aftermath of the August 2019 decision to scrap Article 370. That has enhanced his political profile.
The 'Popular' Youth Leader
Ayesha, a 60-year-old voter, was all praises for Para and it is his promises to free the youth from the regime of wrongful imprisonment that seems to have guided her way to the ballot. “When a young man like him, who hails from this very area, will represent us in the legislature, that will be huge,” she said, smiling gently as journalists thrust a mike into her face. There was quite a commotion at the gates of the polling station when Para, dressed in a starched white kurta and black vest, arrived to vote.
Among the young first time voters, a realisation appears to have dawned that ballot remains a very effective way of articulating their political grievances.
“The stone-pelting and civil uprisings led us to lose our very crucial years,” said a lean young man, a first-time voter, in his twenties. He did not want to be identified. “Today, our votes will emphatically assert what we think about ourselves.”
This enthusiasm has also been reflected in the turnout in the Pulwama seat which rose staggeringly from a poor 38.1 percent in 2014 to 50.42 percent in 2024.
Disillusionment With CPIM's Monopoly in Kulgam
35 km away in the Kahrote village in Kulgam, under the arbour of tall walnut trees, voters have made long queues outside the polling stations. They are mostly men, bearded, skull-capped, and wearing kurtas.
The village is a stronghold of the Jamaat-e-Islami, which currently stands outlawed for its alleged association with terrorism. But candidates linked to the group are contesting independently.
One of them is Sayar Ahmad Reshi, an educator who has a doctorate in political science. His party symbol is a laptop which has also become his metonym of sorts. “We are voting for the laptop,” was the constant refrain that people voiced in the village.
His political campaigning received an electrifying reception in Kulgam.
Voters queued up outside a polling booth in Kahrote village in Kulgam.
(Photo: Author)
But Sayar has also faced criticism for symbolising what some segments of Kashmiri people see as a “betrayal” by the Jamaat for reneging on their promise to shun the elections in the wake of the rigging of the assembly polls in 1987 that opened the floodgates of pent-up anger against New Delhi, and morphed into an armed insurgency.
For the last 22 years, the Kulgam seat has been won consistently by Muhammad Yusuf Tarigami of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which is part of the INDIA bloc.
Crucial INDIA Bloc Partner May Feel the Heat
Low-to-medium turnout (it was 56.5 percent in 2014) has ensured that Tarigami leveraged his traditional vote bank to help him stay afloat in power. But that might change this time. Kulgam saw 62.62 percent polling on 10 September, driven by the spirited participation of Jamaat cadres, something that The Quint witnessed at Kahrote village.
Zakir Gulshan, a 38-year-old villager, said that he would boycott the polls in the past but voted this time because of the “change of mind” Reshi has evoked in him. “He is a young, dynamic and educated candidate,” Gulshan said.
He described CPIM as being a highly monopolistic party that reserved the spoils of successive electoral victories for itself and the party's loyalists. “They would get all the development-related contracts. They also had complete control over gram sabhas,” he said. When asked about the allegations that Reshi was part of the BJP’s gameplay, Gulshan shrugged and dismissed them. “It is all political propaganda against him,” he added.
What may further throw a wrench in the CPIM’s prospects is the political infighting within its alliance partner, the NC, which did not field its spokesperson Imran Nabi Dar in the Kulgam constituency.
Dar is the son of Ghulam Nabi Dar, a venerated leader from Kulgam who was killed in a grenade blast in 2006. “The denial of the ticket to Dar has left his supporters miffed,” said a veteran journalist, who did not want to be named, adding, “This is the most strange election I have witnessed in Kashmir’s history.”
(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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