Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir is set to vote in the first phase of Assembly Elections on Wednesday. The polls are taking place after a decade and would count as the first regional elections in the UT after the abrogation of Article 370 and the division of the erstwhile state into two federally controlled territories in 2019.
The last assembly polls were conducted in 2014 after which the Peoples Democratic Party and Bharatiya Janata Party formed a coalition government that lasted just three years.
In the first phase of elections on Wednesday (September 18), 24 assembly constituencies are going to polls. The polling will be held in four seats of Pulwama, two seats of Shopian, three seats of Kulgam, seven seats of Anantnag, two seats of Ramban and Banihal, three seats of Kishtwar and three seats of Doda districts.
The Election Commission and Chief Electoral Officer have made elaborate security and logistic arrangements for the voting. The election campaigning by the political parties and the candidates concluded on Monday evening. Per the Election Commission, 23.27 lakh voters will be casting their vote. This includes 5.66 lakh young voters and 1.23 lakh first-time voters. The ECI has established 3,276 polling stations for voting in the 24 constituencies.
Of the 24 seats, four assembly segments will be the ones political pundits will keep an eye on. These seats have two debutant PDP candidates, two Sikh contestants and NC and Congress pitted against each other.
Waheed Para vs NC in Pulwama
The first seat is the Pulwama assembly segment where PDP’s youth leader Waheed Ur Rehman Para will be fighting against his former party colleague Muhammad Khalil Bandh. Bandh, 73, is a three-time legislator who won the 2002, 2008 and 2014 assembly elections on a trot on the PDP ticket. However, after the abrogation of Article 370 when PDP began splitting, Bandh joined the National Conference.
Para, who at 36 is almost half Bandh's age had campaigned for him in the 2008 and 2014 elections as a PDP youth leader from Pulwama. Now both are locked against each other in a fierce electoral contest.
Para has been a controversial political figure and is out on bail for one year in a case of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act involving suspended police officer Davinder Singh, who was arrested with two Hizbul Mujahideen commanders in 2020 in Anantnag while travelling in a car on the Srinagar-Jammu highway. Para was arrested by the National Investigation Agency in 2020 for his alleged links with militants and was in jail for more than 18 months.
This is Para’s first assembly elections. He was defeated in the parliament elections by Aga Ruhullah Mehdi of the National Conference. Using his jail ordeal as an emotional card during the parliament elections, Para attracted young voters. In the campaigning for assembly elections, he repeated the jail story to mobilise young voters. His opponent Bandh used the development card of his three terms as a legislator and also PDP’s truck with the BJP in the 2014 polls, of which Bandh was also a legislator and then a cabinet minister in the Mehbooba Mufti-led coalition.
Young voters, women and the delimitation of the constituency could play into Para’s favour in the hot contest in the segment.
Singh vs Singh in Tral
Tral assembly segment will have an interesting battle between two Sikh candidates, an independent Muslim candidate and a PDP’s new entrant. INDIA bloc has fielded Congress general secretary Surinder Singh Channi, Awami Itehad Party (AIP) of Engineer Rashid has fielded a Sikh candidate Dr Harbaksh Singh, popularly known as Shanty. Singh was with PDP, who was the first Sikh politician elected in a Muslim majority seat of Tral as District Development Council (DDC) member.
PDP has fielded a new entrant Rafiq Naik, a former government employee, who joined PDP a month after his retirement. He is the son of NC’s former minister late Ali Muhammad Naik. An independent candidate Dr Ghulam Nabi Bhat, who was a senior leader of NC from Tral, is contesting against the party’s alliance candidate Channi Singh and can dent NC’s vote for the INDIA bloc candidate. The Sikh voters are divided between AIP’s Channi and Shanty, while the Muslim voters will be divided between Naik and Dr Bhat. A rally by Engineer Rashid on Sunday in Tral, a fragile and volatile place during militancy, created a murmur in favour of AIP. Will Muslim majority voters of Tral make ‘Singh their king’? Come the counting day on October 8.
Iltija Mufti vs NC in Bijbehara
PDP president Mehbooba Mufti refused to contest the elections, citing the new disempowered assembly of the union territory. Yet she fielded her 37-year-old daughter Iltija Mufti. Iltija will be locked in a ballot battle with NC’s senior leader and former MLC Dr Bashir Ahmad Shah in the Bijbehara segment whose electoral map has been altered and renamed Srigufwara-Bijbehara. PDP vice president Abdul Rehman Bhat had won the seat four times since 1998 assembly by-elections against NC. But the PDP gambled on this ‘safe’ seat by replacing Bhat with Iltija to fight against NC’s Shah. BJP has fielded former MLC Sofi Yousuf. The constituency will see a bilateral contest between Iltija and Bashir Veeri on Wednesday.
Iltija ran a high voltage campaign since her nomination despite PDP being on its loose turf in south Kashmir due to its coalition with BJP and Mehbooba Mufti’s ‘Milk and Toffee’ remark for the protesters in 2016 agitation when she was the chief minister with BJP’s support. Iltija is banking on the PDP’s cadre vote and hoping her outspoken stand on Article 370 after August 5, 2019, may attract young voters towards her side. Her regular social media appearance shot her into prominence which she tried to cash in on for her electoral career.
Communists vs banned JeI in Kulgam
In the Kulgam assembly segment, the lone communist leader of the Kashmir valley Muhammad Yousuf Rather, popularly known as Tarigami, the name of his native village, is for the first time facing his formidable political rivals, the banned Jammat-e-Isami, in the direct electoral battle. The religio-political organisation, facing a ban since the Pulwama suicide attack in February 2019 on a CRPF convoy on Srinagar-Jammu national Highway, is backing a former JeI member Sayar Ahmad Reshi. The 45-year-old political science lecturer, Reshi, is hoping to defeat the 75-year-old four-time legislator Tarigami who has won four assembly elections on the trot since 1996.
Both the candidates ran a high-octane campaign to convince the Kulgam voters towards them. Laced with a religious tone, Reshi’s campaign involved a mix of religious invocation and his new development vision for Kulgam. Tarigami invoked the JeI’s election boycott history and its role during militancy. The poll campaigning saw Tarigami first time nervous against his political nemesis.
In addition to these four seats, Banihal and Zainapora assembly segments will be watched out for. NC and Congress are in a direct contest in the Banihal assembly constituency. The INDI bloc partners have named it “a friendly” contest even as the candidates of both parties didn’t keep anything friendly during campaigning. The Congress’s two-time legislator and former party president Vikar Rasool and NC’s Sajad Shaheen are locked in the direct poll in the Chenab Valley seat. While both the parties are contesting in alliance on 83 seats of the 90 segments, Banihal witnessed political campaigning of the two rivals where nothing remained friendly between them.
PDP’s former MLA Aijaz Ahmad Mir is contesting on Zainapora seat as an independent after Mehbooba Mufti denied him a ticket. The 37-year-old law graduate on his debut elections in 2014 had defeated NC’s Showkat Ganaie and was known among the Mehbooba loyalists. Mir is backed by the banned JeI, which has considerable support in Zainapora constituency. Mir’s revolt has diminished the chances of PDP’s candidate Mohiddin Wani in the apple-belt seat which PDP would count in its winning kitty before the polls. The constituency will see a triangular contest between NC’s former MLC Showkat Ganaie, Ajaz Mir and PDP.
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