In 2024’s free and fair election to a skirted assembly, the electors in Jammu and Kashmir gave a landslide mandate to JKNC. It brought back the old days of the one-party system in the erstwhile state. Offering the key takeaways from the 3-phase exercise after 10 years of wait, Masood Hussain writes that while sectarian, linguistic and tribal fault lines did not fragment the voter base, the regional voting patterns could polarise making it Jammu versus Kashmir and not Jammu and Kashmir.
The elections to the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly in 2024 made history the day the results were announced. Held to elect legislators to the enlarged but not empowered assembly, the electoral landscape had been suitably adjusted, “gerrymandered”, to give Jammu a larger share than ever before.
Held literally on the day of the deadline set by the Supreme Court, the outcome surprised not only the exit pollsters and the poll strategist but not the voters in the valley.
These elections are bound to have far-reaching consequences on the politics and governance of Jammu Kashmir, an erstwhile state bifurcated by the BJP-led government after reading down Article 370 on August 5, 2019.
Return of the Single Party Rule
Amid expectations of a fractured mandate and a hung house cobbling up a working majority number would be challenging, the Kashmir voters were surprised. For the first time after the 1996 assembly elections, Jammu and Kashmir’s grand old political party, the National Conference emerged as the single largest party.
From 1987 onwards, except 1996, J&K has always been ruled by a coalition.
Numbers apart, its victories suggest the party is the only political force in Jammu and Kashmir that has representation from almost all the regions, religions and communities inhabiting the erstwhile state. It is an inclusive and diversified group of Muslims (both Sunni and Shia), Hindus and Sikhs; Gujjars and Rajput Muslims or the Paharis.
With the bulk of seats, 35, coming from the Jehlum Valley, it has secured four from the Pir Panchal ranges and three from the Ramban (Chenab). However, it lacks any representation from Jammu’s main Hindu belt and most of the Chenab Valley.
JKNC had 47 seats in 1977, 46 in 1983, 40 in 1987 and 57 in 1996. In the 2024 assembly polls, the JKNC won 42 seats across Jammu and Kashmir.
After the demise of Sheikh Abdullah, when Dr Farooq Abdullah took over with an impressive mandate in 1983, he, to the dislike of Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi, hobnobbed with the opposition parties. This led to the bifurcation of his party when his brother-in-law, Ghulam Mohammad Shah took away 12 lawmakers and constituted his own government with the help of Congress on July 2, 1984, which lasted till March 6, 1986. After Rajiv Gandhi succeeded Mrs Gandhi after her assassination, an outreach and a family friendship led to the JKNC-Congress coalition that existed till Dr Farooq resigned as Chief Minister in early 1990.
The party conceded most of Jammu and part of Kashmir to the Congress, a system that continues to be in vogue. In 2002, there was a coalition between PDP and Congress, in 2008, JKNC ruled full term with Congress support and in 2014 PDP brought in BJP to rule Jammu and Kashmir. In 2014, when the election was held for the first time in 10 years, JKNC had a pre-poll alliance with the Congress.
What made the party’s performance interesting was that it contested slightly more than 50 seats and still emerged as the top gainer. With four of the lawmakers who won as independents (after being denied party mandate because of coalition compulsions), the party bagged good numbers. With independents, AAP and CPIM support, it had enough numbers but the party still kept the promise of taking Congress along.
Old Adversary, new Ally
Seemingly, the JKNC’s pre-poll alliance with Congress cost it a fortune. With six berths to its credit, Congress got five from Kashmir and one in Rajouri. It lacks even a single Hindu member.
Analysts believe that JKNC could have won three of the six berths without Congress’s support. The national party’s worst performance in history suggests it piggybacked the JKNC to power. It had 14 seats in the 2014 assembly when it was in opposition with JKNC.
This scenario was being predicted during campaigning when the Congress focussed more on Kashmir rather than Jammu. Rahul Gandhi flew to Kashmir twice, a decision that irked his friend, Omar, who suggested the party focus on Jammu. Congress’s focus on Kashmir fetched it five of the six seats from Kashmir and only one seat from Rajouri. There is not a single Hindu candidate in Congress right now.
When the two parties announced the pre-poll deal, JKNC contested 51 seats and Congress 32 seats. JKNC won 42 and Congress six, most of them in Kashmir.
BJP Retains Stronghold
The right-wing BJP that rules Jammu and Kashmir remotely through the Lt Governor retained its stronghold, the Hindu belt of Jammu. During the initial phase of campaigning, it seemed as if the party may give part of its influence to an aggressive Congress as the Lok Sabha numbers had suggested. However, when the party deputed Ram Madhav, an old Kashmir hand to Jammu and Kashmir, things started changing.
In this election, the BJP expected it may succeed in opening its account in Kashmir, which could not happen. It was contesting 19 seats in Kashmir. It lost Gurez’s seat by 1132 votes. Had it requested its like-minded not to field its candidates, it might have won the seat a few hundred votes. It finished second – much better than PDP, which finished at No 4, in Habakadal (Srinagar). Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had flown to Gurez to campaign for BJP’s Faqir Mohammad, an erstwhile JKNC lawmaker.
The party’s performance is being seen as the best performance since 1987 when it contested for the first time as BJP. Analysts, however, believe that its performance remained almost the same as it was in 2014. In 2014 it won 25 of the 37 seats in Jammu and in 2024, it won 29 of the 43 seats in Jammu. Its numerical improvements are being seen as the direct benefit of the delimitation, which gave Jammu six seats and Kashmir one. Of the six new seats added to the Jammu region, BJP swept five – Doda West, Padder-Nagsei, Ramgarh, Jasrota and Ramnagar.
For most of the last five years, Jammu has been very vocal against the roll-out of Naya Kashmir post abrogation of Article 370. With durbar move halted, incomes down, a halt in jobs and too many investors coming for land, Jammu moved out on the streets many times. However, as the region voted it ensured the BJP does not lose what it has already gained. It defeated Choudhary Lal Singh, considered to be the veteran in the region. Its marginal loss, however, came from its own rebels, some erstwhile lawmakers who were denied the mandate.
BJP Factor In Kashmir
The BJP continued to play a major factor in the assembly election. JKNC, which emerged as the major political party this election, contested the Lok Sabha simply on the basis of who is with BJP and who is not. In this election, it emerged as a major factor. All the political parties which were seen closer to BJP or presumed to be so were literally massacred in the ballot spree in a highly participation election of the region.
PDP, the ruling party till 2018, when its alliance with BJP collapsed was the biggest loser in the game. It was almost decimated as it got only three seats. For the first time, the family will be out of the assembly. While the party was the key target post-2019, there were issues within the party that also contributed to its downfall. A general perception is that the party did not get any support because it is being assumed that it brought the BJP into Kashmir.
The winners were Waheed Para from the Pulwama seat (8148 vote margin), Rafiq Ahmad Naik from Tral who won with 461 votes and Mir Mohammad Fayaz from Kupwara who polled good votes and trounced JKNC’s Nasir Sogami and Sajad Lone, the latter losing his security deposit. At the same time, however, PDP’s former ministers topped the list of major losers in the election.
When the PDP was being undone, most of its frontline leadership left the party and joined other parties. Syed Mohammad Altaf Bukhari led the Jammu Kashmir Apni Party, which was constituted within a year after August 2019, and was the key beneficiary of the migration as it got most of its members. Unlike other parties, Bukhari went public with the statement that he is a friend of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asserted it throughout. In the 2024 assembly election, however, it did not open its account as it lost all the seats including the one contested by its founder.
Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) was another political start-up, which Ghulam Nabi Azad launched after deserting Congress after half a century. It was supposed to have some influence in the Chenab Valley region which includes the Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban districts. It could not open its account at all as it was presumed from the day that its creation might be linked with the ruling BJP.
Peoples Conference leader Sajad Gani Lone who was a BJPDP minister from the BJP quota in the last government was also seen having ties with the BJP. In Lok Sabha, he retained his seat and this time in assembly polls, he somehow managed to retain it with only 662 votes.
Engineer Rasheed, who was in Tihar for the last more than five years in a terror funding case, was elected member of Lok Sabha from North Kashmir Baramulla after his sons led a huge campaign for his release. Quickly the family decided to take the Awami Itehad Party to the next level and contest the assembly election at a grand scale. They fielded candidates at 38 seats but could win only the home seat at Langate with a slender margin against the neighbour-rival Sajad Lone. Rasheed, who got bail for a limited period, campaigned for his candidates almost 20 hours a day. However, the JKNC and the PDP asserted that his bail was aimed at impacting the elections. This went against him across Kashmir.
This election saw another party contesting – Jamaat-e-Islami, a party banned for the last six years now. 10 such candidates across Kashmir filed their nominations and ran brisk campaigning. Their participation led the JKNC and PDP to dub them proxies as most of the party leaders were in jail. One of the candidates contested with his GPS anklet on. Barring Kulgam where the people preferred to re-elect Communist leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami for the fifth term and push the so-called Jamaat candidate to end up as a runner-up, these 10 candidates could not do well anywhere.
There were almost 28 candidates who had some separatist background and some of them were former militants but none of them survived with their security deposit intact.
Unlike the Lok Sabha, no emotional issue was taken by the voters seriously. It was as true with Jamaat candidate’s GPS anklet as it was with Sugra Barkati’s emotional oratory.
Communal Divide
The emerging situation is taking Jammu and Kashmir towards a communal division. Kashmir in general and the Muslim population across the erstwhile state is unwilling to see any kind of sympathy for the BJP and the Hindu belt is completely in support of the party. This situation is pushing Jammu and Kashmir towards a more visible divide that goes beyond culture and geography.
Keeping the massive mandate of Jammu out of the governance structure could manifest in many ways. JKNC has two Hindus and support from three independent in its fold but that still leaves the main Jammu out of power. While the senior BJP leaders have conveyed that they will sit in opposition and work for the erstwhile state, apparently drawing support from the Raj Bhawan that will continue to be the de facto ruler, the tensions could remain. People have started worrying about the potential polarisation that this could lead to.
“The BJP has drawn a blank in Kashmir and the Congress a virtual blank in Jammu,” Dr Karan Singh told reporters over the 2024 verdict of the people from “the beautiful state created by my ancestors”. “There is thus a clear and sharp political divide between the two regions which will be a challenge for the new government to overcome administratively.”
“The mandate is virtually along communal lines, which cannot augur well for either the state or the country. This election will go down in the electoral history of Jammu and Kashmir as the one in which Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir, who have never been a political category, have been made one. With Pir Panjal (Rajouri and Poonch) and Chenab Valley (Doda and Bhaderwah), administratively a part of Jammu province, voting largely for NC, the 75-year-old Dixon plan of dividing the state along the Chenab seems to have been resuscitated,” Haseeb Drabu, Jammu Kashmir’s last finance minister, wrote in The Indian Express. “With the elected representatives of the entire region of the Jammu plains not being in government, it should not come as a surprise if the demand for a separate statehood for Jammu, which is often raised, becomes strident. Post 2019, for all practical purposes, Jammu has been virtually bifurcated from Kashmir, administratively. The geographically split mandate has distanced the two politically. This has only added to the fissures between Jammu and Kashmir, which at the best of times have been adversarial, if not antagonistic to each other. The two now share little else than a troubled past, having nothing in common; geographically, linguistically, culturally, ethnically and economically or in terms of religion.”
It is anticipated that Jammu will have a lot of say even without being part of the government, but it remains to be seen how the political aspirations of the region will be accommodated by the new dispensation.
Arbitrary Division Faded
Post-2019, it seemed as if there was a lot of effort in encouraging the assumed fault lines on tribal, sectarian and linguistic basis. From offering transportation to nomadic Bakerwals for their herds to including Pahari Speaking People (PSP) in the reservation list, a series of interventions were aimed at creating distinctions within an apparently homogenous demography.
Lok Sabha polls were the first indicator suggesting that the recently encouraged divisions may dissipate in the coming days. JKNC picked two candidates and it led to the evaporation of it. It fielded Mian Altaf Ahmad from South Kashmir-Poonch constituency and he won with an impressive margin indicating the Gujjars, Bakerwals and most of the PSPs ignored the investment made in them in recent days. From Central Kashmir, it fielded Agha Ruhullah Mehdi, a Shia leader in a hugely Sunni-dominated landscape and he won with flying numbers.
It was almost the same thing getting repeated this time. From Pattan where the last Sunni politician won in 1977, a former policeman, Javaid Reyaz Bedar trounced the reigning Shia cleric and politician, albeit by a slender margin.
Even the SC and ST classification did not help beyond a point. Most of the Scheduled Caste seats were swept by the BJP because there are no Muslim SCs. Jammu and Kashmir’s all seven of the SC-reserved seats and six of its nine ST-reserved ones fall in the Jammu region. The BJP won all the SC-reserved seats, but could not win a single ST-reserved seat in the districts of Rajouri, Poonch and Reasi.
JKNC won Budhal, Gulabgarh and Mendhar; Congress got Rajouri. Surankote and Thanamandi were won by JKNC as independents and they have come back to the party. In Kashmir, Kangan, Gurez and Kokernag were also won by the JKNC.
While these arbitrary divisions created over the years did not help anyway, the larger division remained – Hindu and Muslim.
2019 Matters
Given the enforced reticence in the last five years, quite a few people talked freely even after they cast their votes. Everybody talked about Roti, Kapda, Makan issues but the fact remains that they used the vote as a tool to register their anger and hate against the arbitrary decision-making on August 5, 2019. Jammu and Kashmir’s majority verdict is an anti-BJP vote and most of the BJP vote in Jammu is mostly a faith-centric support.
The outcome of the elections would have been a complete black-and-white image had the PAGD not been undone and had the JKNC skipped an alliance with Congress. The shades of grey would have disappeared and offered a clear picture of the state of the ground. The divisions within the secular parties and friendly contests took away many seats from JKNC and the erstwhile PAGD.
“What happened in 2019 is more than a memory,” commented a voter in Sopore. “It is something that will determine events in Jammu and Kashmir for a very long time.”
