In North Kashmir, 22 candidates are vying for 1.7 million votes and the contest is between Omar Abdullah and Sajad Lone. But the two sons of jailed lawmaker, Engineer Rasheed have stolen the show, writes Masood Hussain
“The abrogation of Article 370 has enabled the potential and aspirations of the people to find full expression,” Prime Minister wrote on X, the erstwhile Twitter on May 13, hours after Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency reported 37.98 per cent polling. “Happening at the grassroots level, it is great for the people of J&K, in particular the youth.”
“The Modi Government’s decision to abrogate Article 370 is showing results in the poll percentage as well,” Home Minister, Amit Shah, wrote on X. “It has enhanced people’s trust in democracy and its roots have deepened in Jammu and Kashmir.”
Talking to a news channel on May 15, Shah revealed people from Jamaat-e-Islami and Hurriyat Conference (currently banned), who do not believe in the Indian Constitution, have also voted.
Back home, turnout was impressive to some and normal to many. Political class disagreed about what better participation coveys. “Polling yesterday was good because the people wanted to send a message to Delhi that the decision taken in 2019 and afterwards about our land and state subjects and jobs are not acceptable to the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” PDP president, Mehbooba Mufti told reporters at Qazigund.“They (people) want to take their voice to Parliament through ballots and tell them we are being oppressed, facing hardships.” JKNC’s Aga Ruhullah said the same thing.
“The increase of a few per cent hardly matters as it happens in every constituency of India. That way, we cannot know whether the people are angry or happy (with the abrogation of Article 370 and snatching of statehood),” an unimpressed Ghulam Nabi Azad, former Chief Minister, told reporters. “There were some pockets affected by militancy. After 1994-95, the militancy started waning. Today the militancy is next to nothing. The areas affected by militancy also witnessed 30-40 per cent votes and the areas which were not affected, also had similar turnout.”
The fact remains. Urban Srinagar had been a chronic low-poll area. Before it was redrawn by BJP’s Delimitation Commission, it recorded 14.43 per cent polling in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, 25.86 per cent in 2014, 25.55 per cent in 2009 and 18.57 per cent in 2004. The 2024 participation in the redrawn segment was the highest in so many years.
Theatre Shifts
As the polling shifts from Kashmir’s traditional low-poll belt to the northern areas the participation is expected to surge. The region has remained a major electoral vault as its participation was always impressive. In the 2019 elections, the pre-redrawn segment polled 34.71 per cent.
Expectations are that turnout could double, given the involvement of the people. During campaigning all the major contestants were drawing huge crowds and unlike Srinagar, there were huge rallies blocking roads for as long as half days. So far, the biggest urban crowd was seen in Baramulla on May 16, where allies – Sajad Lone and Altaf Bukhari, gathered too many people in the town. “It was an impressive show,” one reporter, who attended the rally, said. “There were jib cameras at work and looked like filmy. For the first time, I saw massive investment that politics has started taking in Kashmir.”
Contestants deserve credit for mass involvement. 22 candidates are vying for 1732459 votes. The main players are four, of whom; the PDP’s Fayaz Ahmad Mir is suitably placed around the bottom. Initially, the contest was seen as a black-and-white affair between JKNC’s Omar Abdullah and Peoples’ Conference’s Sajad Lone. As the campaigning picked up, jailed lawmaker Engineer Rasheed’s sons changed the dynamics of the exercise.
Srinagar was bipolar with a projection of being triangular to accommodate the post-2019 realities. Baramulla is more complex. It has Omar Abdullah, the heir apparent of Kashmir’s oldest and largest political party. His challenger is Sajad Lone, the son of Abdul Gani Lone, the assassinated separatist leader, who has been a firebrand politician of his era and very well respected by Kupwara’s fading generation. In between the duo is Engineer Rasheed, who has been in jail since 2019 in a terror funding case, and whose two novice sons are running his campaign.
Unlike Sajad and Omar, who are on the two sides of the 2019 decision-making, Rasheed’s sons are telling people that their vote can get their father out and keep him in Delhi – instead of Tihar in the Lok Sabha. This is what is driving north.
In 2019, when the constituency comprised 15 assembly segments (now 18), JKNC’s Mohammad Akbar Lone was elected. His party swept eight segments of Kupwara, Lolab, Rafiabad, Sopore, Gurez, Bandipora, Sonawari, and Sangrama and ended up as runner-up at two – Handwara, Uri. Sajad Lone’s party was most polled in Handwara and Pattan (Imran Ansari joined Lone in November 2018) and a runner-up in Kupwara, Langate, and Sonawari. Rasheed was the most polled politician in five segments – Langate, Karnah, Uri, Baramulla, and Gulmarg and runner-up in Lolab, Rafiabad, Sopore, and Sangrama. There was not a huge variation in the votes they polled. Akbar Lone took 133426 and won, Sajad’s party bagged 103193 and ended as a runner and Rasheed got 102168 votes to end up poor 3.
Indications suggest this is unlikely to happen in 2024. Unlike Srinagar where the two key contestants had some basic things in common, Baramulla front runners are completely different and pitted in a complex contest.
Omar Abdullah
Omar Abdullah is right now the JKNC. Flanked by his two sons, he is calling the shots right now. That makes his victory over Baramulla crucial. Initially, Omar would target his arch-rival PDP. Occasional attacks on Sajad, notwithstanding, it took him some time to understand the fast-changing dynamics of the space.
Not new to Lok Sabha though, Omar had three stints already. In 1998, he won and became the Junior Minister for Commerce and Industry. In 2001, again in the Vajpayee government, he became the poster boy of the Foreign Ministry as a junior minister. In 2002, he lost an assembly election in Ganderbal but won Srinagar in 2004 for Lok Sabha and was part of the Congress-led UPA regime.
In 2008, Omar won Ganderbal and became the Chief Minister in alliance with Congress. In 2014, he won from Beerwah with a whisker to become the opposition leader. Now in Baramulla, he is dubbed a “tourist”.
“If you think we are contesting against Sajad, you are mistaken,” a senior JKNC leader from Jammu who campaigned in Baramulla last week, said. “This battle is against the might of BJP that is so keen to see JKNC weakened. We have a saying in Dogri – Apniyan phirn kywaruian, teh paraiyan tarampiyaan (the real daughter is unmarried and the adopted daughter is being taken care of). The BJP avoided a contest from Kashmir, adopted some parties and is helping them fight us.”
Omar’s campaigning is difficult. To amplify the significance of JKNC as a movement, he is reintroducing Sheikh Abdullah to a generation that hardly knows him. The land to the tiller, the slavery, and the exploitation by monarchs who would sell Kashmiris like cattle and subjugate them are almost three generations old. “Now, we are being pushed towards the same economic and political slavery and today it is the duty of every conscious and sensitive citizen to protect this historical state,” Omar told a cheering crowd in Sonawari. “Everyone must play their role to save Jammu and Kashmir.”
For PDP, his argument is simple: ‘punish the party that brought BJP into Kashmir’. For Sajad, he tells people: how can a family be with militancy today and against it, the next day? Off late, Omar seems to have read too much about the amorphous years of militancy to invoke specifics that help him counter Lone.
“If you think a little, you will find that all the agencies, BJP, New Delhi, Nagpur, A team, B team, C team and D team are all focused on this and there is a joint effort by all to see how to weaken JKNC, how to manipulate, how to divide the votes in some way,” he routinely says. “You have to answer these powers, all the conspiracies.” He insists that the party will keep the Article 370 issue alive. “We are working on the assumption that if not today, someday you will have a government at the Centre that will be happy to engage with us on these issues,” he told a newsroom in Delhi. “Let’s not forget, the BJP has been promising to abrogate Article 370 for decades. It’s only now that they managed to do it. So I’m not suggesting that our struggle will be a short one. It may take long but it’s a commitment we’re willing to make.”
Off late, he is playing the faith card too. He highlights the BJP’s attitude towards the Muslims, starting from attacks during prayers and the Mangal Sutra statement. “Those fighting elections on the symbols of apple, bat-ball and bucket have to answer why they are not raising their voice against BJP. Are these people not seeing how the BJP is oppressing minorities, particularly Muslims?”
Sajad Lone
Like Omar, Lone Jr is also a London-read, angry man with his share of arrogance. Son of slain Hurriyat leader Abdul Gani Lone and son-in-law of now-banned JKLF co-founder, Amanullah Khan, Sajad has his indelible memories of pains and miseries that he encountered during militancy when he was arrested. Once, while being transported from one place to another, he feared he might get “encountered” in an orchard. “I told the Prime Minister (in the all-party meeting) that I am with India because of that security man who was convinced of my innocence, who brought cooked food for me and who ensured I was not humiliated while in custody,” Sajad once said. “I was set free and I went out and did not return for long.”
Dubbing Omar “a Pappu”, in retaliation for his BJP-link allegations, Lone insists: “I was hung upside down. I have gone through all this.”
His entry into politics started after his father was assassinated. It was a series of ‘battles’. First with his brother, then with Syed Ali Geelani to be followed by one with Prof Abdul Gani Bhat and finally with Mirwaiz. Sajad took his own time to gradually come out of the separatist block, using his ‘transition era’ in writing his own Kashmir gospel, the Achievable Nationhood.
Sajad’s first major political involvement was to field proxy candidates during the 2002 assembly election. One of them won and became a minister in the PDP-Congress coalition that Mufti Sayeed led. It created a situation that eventually led to the vertical split in the Hurriyat. In 2008, he fielded many candidates but nobody could succeed.
Lone’s party contested Lok Sabha too. In 2009, it polled 65403 votes. In 2014, he fielded Salamuddin Bajad who polled 71154 votes. This tally improved to 133612 when his party contested three seats and ended as runner-up in one.
In 2014, he was personally one of the 26 PC candidates in the assembly elections. He won two berths and polled 93182 votes, which made 7.42 per cent of the polled votes in the seats they contested. He became a minister as part of the BJPDP alliance from BJP quota.
After the coalition collapsed in 2018 summer, the Kashmir parties and Congress joined hands and staked claim for restoration of the government but the governor Satya Pal Malik’s fax machine ‘malfunctioned’. Instead of meeting the parties, he dissolved the assembly. Later, he said Sajad was a claimant to the throne with BJP support despite having only two lawmakers.
In anticipation of August 5, 2019, when PDP and NC come together in the famous Gupkar protest, Sajad also joined. Later he was one of the scores of detained politicians. In incarceration, he grew very popular within the political class as it helped them connect better. Once free, he was one of the major players in the PAGD, the alliance he dumped after the DDC polls. Since then, he has been aggressively working to expand his base as part of the flock that migrated out of the PDP joined him. He was one of the many petitioners against the abrogation of Article 370 in the Supreme Court, a decision; he now says was perhaps a mistake.
Now is the time for Lone to prove that he matters.
Article 370, he told reporters in Baramulla is “close to our heart” and he will “never accept its abrogation. “But for the time being, we are talking about development with dignity. We have to be equal Indians and do not want a different set of laws for the youth in Kashmir.” On Article 370 issue, Lone insists that JKNC and other parties are misleading people. “We contend that if with three MPs you could not stop it from being abrogated, how can you get (it back) with three MPs?” Lone told a Delhi newsroom. “I don’t think that the Congress or any other party would be in a position to do that, because the popular sentiment seems to be against it.”
To make his mark, he joined hands with the ‘like-minded’ Apni Party for a rainbow alliance for which the BJP is happy. While Bukhari’s party is supporting Lone in the north, he will reciprocate in south Kashmir.
Happy that the new government has given “a struggler” like him “a level playing field”, Lone said NC and PDP are closer to BJP than all other parties. All his references are pre-2019.
Lone is choosey in his attacks. He targets Omar more because the “tourist” is the main challenger. He is talking about the three NC MPs failing to articulate the anger that the August 5, decision triggered in Kashmir.
During campaigning Lone has made job-linked police verification a major issue. Normally, the antecedents of the person who was being appointed were to be checked. It was NC; he says that started the process of verifying the entire clan. “I want an end to this culture,” he said almost everywhere. To connect with the people he talks about his jail days when he was tortured. For the turmoil of the last 35 years, Lone is holding NC responsible as he believes the 1987 rigging pushed the youth towards the gun.
This is the chief reason, why he aggressively told a Sopore crowd: “Sajad Lone’s win is not as important as Omar Abdullah’s defeat. His defeat will be a defeat of slavery and torture.”
Engineer Rasheed
If Omar loses, it is unlikely because of Sajad. It can only happen if the two sons of Rasheed succeed in converting their crowds into votes. They have already triggered a wave in the region without actually promising anything. Their plea is simple: vote for their father, a two-time lawmaker so that he moves out of Tihar after five years.
The rise of Rasheed from Langate, barely 2 km from Sajad’s residence has been phenomenal. A protégé of Abdul Gani Lone, Sajad’s father, this Jammu and Kashmir Projects Construction Corporation engineer has remained vocal throughout his life. At the peak of militancy, he would talk about human rights, which led him to his share in begaar, the forced labour.
One day in 2018, he decided to hang his boots and contest. He resigned, campaigned for 18 days and won by 211 votes defeating the PDP. In 2014, he retained his seat with a better margin. Very vocal, aggressive, noisy, at times theatrical, and mostly controversial, he would dominate any debate. His Urdu writings are professional. That made him famous within and outside the assembly.
On August 10, 2019, federal investigator NIA arrested him in a terror funding case. For all these years, he has been using the weekly phone call to stay connected with his workers. At the last moment, he decided to contest.
In less than a fortnight, his two sons, Abrar and Asrar, have been the stars of the region’s electoral campaign. Everywhere they got a massive crowd: Tihar ka badla, vote say laingay (we will average the imprisonment with the vote). His home is the most crowded space in the region. Kashmir Life had to stop the interview twice during the middle of the night as people, strangers to the family, came from distant places just to say hello. “One person reached his home after midnight banged the doors and got in,” Kashmir Life’s presenter journalist Shadab Gillani said. “Once in, he shook hands took a selfie and went back home to Bandipore”.
Bandipore town, resident elders said, witnessed the only major rally in history the day one of the Engineer’s sons visited. “I move with a car in the morning and by evening when I get home, I see 200 vehicles following me,” Abrar said. “People are doing everything.” Mudasir Thokar, a PhD scholar from Shopian, moved barefoot almost 114 km to reach Rasheed’s home and joined his campaigning.
Analysts believe that the Engineer’s symbol, the pressure cooker, aptly describes the situation. “Kashmir right now is in a pressure cooker and the people are finding valves to give a vent to their crisis,” one Baramulla elder said. “Amongst all in the contest, the new generation is supportive of these young boys whose only plea is to get their father out of jail.” The campaign has helped the Engineer to take his influence beyond his traditional Kupwara base. Seemingly, it is a mix of sympathy and emotion. “I am not a political leader,” Abrar, 23, who is appearing in his PG Science examination on May 25, told the Bandipore gathering. “I have just come to remind you that my father has been behind bars for the last five years for speaking in favour of Kashmiris.”
Most of the first-time voters see some common ground with Abrar. People openly talk about why Rasheed’s lawmaker colleagues did not demand his release. Not even now-collapsed PAGD ever talked about him. Seemingly, this has helped him re-emerge from jail and the followers are keeping him alive on the ground and in the virtual space as well. For all these days, Rasheed has been trending on Twitter. Now Ghulam Nabi Azad-led Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) has announced support for the Engineer.
An Unpredictable Contest
In such a cliffhanger contest nobody can hazard a guess. If emotions matter, the Engineer must win. If organising capacity, resources and post-2019 realities matter, Sajad must defeat all. If the traditional politics has to survive, Omar is the winner.
Certain calculations can be drawn very safely, however. This election is linked to the first post-2019 assembly election, expected to take place later this year. Today’s outcome will impact tomorrow. Omar has already said he will not run for an assembly that is hugely disempowered. But that does not mean JKNC will not. From now on, elections in Jammu and Kashmir will be high-investment activities.
The region has witnessed a new ‘son rise’. But Abrar and Asrar are not going to be the only new-generation starters. Mehbooba’s daughter, Iltija, and Omar’s two son’s Zamir and Zahir are already around.
This is perhaps why the Home Minister flew to Srinagar even though the BJP is not in formal contest. Shah met Paharis, Bakerwals, Gujjars, his party leaders and some local parties. He impressed upon them to encourage and vote for candidates who have the potential to defeat JKNC and PDP.
Omar Abdullah said that Shah had come to help his “proxy” candidates. He reads a tacit BJP support to Azad’s support for Engineer.
“Today, the situation is that the proxy parties of the BJP, which are coercing people, threatening people, and spending huge sums of money, are misinforming the Home Minister,” Mehbooba Mufti claimed, according to The Tribune, alleging Pahari officers were told that if they did not support the Peoples Conference in Baramulla and the Apni Party in Anantnag-Rajouri, the outcome would be “troublesome”. She asked Shah to not “meddle in the elections” and avoid “pre-poll rigging and stop frightening officers.”
What is happening? Nobody knows.
