The Union Home Minister in his statement has categorically mentioned that the statehood of J&K can be restored only after the elections, which is likely to be held in April-May this year.
Democratic elections has been playing truant since 2018 when the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) Mehbooba Mufti government supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fell apart. The last Assembly elections in J&K were held in 2016 and since 2018 the state and now Union Territory has been under the Central rule.
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A team from the Election Commission (EC) is likely to visit Jammu and Kashmir this month to explore whether J&K is ready to go to polls or not. Certainly it will be a much-awaited Assembly polls in the Union Territory of J&K. Pressure is mounting on as the leaders of the political parties from J&K have started to raise their voice for ‘early elections’.
The National Conference (NC), led by Farooq Addullah and his son Omar Abdullah along with PDP-led Mehbooba Mufti, are reviving their cadres for the elections in anticipation that polls will be held in April-May this year. In fact, this will be most-watched elections not only in India but also in foreign countries as J&K has always been in limelight since India’s independence. The NC has already appointed constituency heads for assembly segments. They are seen as potential party candidates and are holding daily meetings in their ‘respective constituencies’ to garner public support.
Though NC and PDP leaders want to contest the elections together under one PAGD banner, they face stiff resistance from within their party ranks to contest separately and take a call on the alliance after the results are announced. The PAGD now comprises of the NC, PDP, the CPI (M) and J&K Awami National Conference. In fact, the PDP, which headed the last coalition government along with the BJP, is also fighting for survival, especially when most of its senior leaders have left the party since 2018 when the PDP-BJP government fell. The party is hoping to retain its hold in South Kashmir.
Yet another new entrant in J&K politics is Altaf Bukhari who floated the Apni Party in March 2020 and was the first Kashmiri leader to reach out to the BJP-led central government after the abrogation of Article 370 hen NC and PDP opposed the move. The BJP leadership hopes for an alliance with Apni Party and Sajjad Lone’s People’s Conference besides support from independent candidates to touch the double-digit figure in the elections. Lone, who was recently elected chairman of the party founded by his late father Abdul Gani Lone in the ’80s, hopes to expand his party’s base beyond North Kashmir.
However the question is whether the now Union Territory of J&K is ready for elections? The delimitation exercise has been completed and the final electoral rolls were published in October last year. On May 5 last year, 43 seats were earmarked for the Hindu-majority Jammu region and 47 for Muslim-majority Kashmir, making a total of 90 seats for the assembly, up from the 83 seats earlier.
Well of the seven new seats, six were allotted to Jammu and one to Kashmir. Earlier, Jammu had 37 seats and Kashmir 46. This brings Kashmir’s representation down to 52.2 per cent from 55.4 per cent of the total seats and takes Jammu’s representation up to 47.8 per cent from 44.6 per cent. The exercise was carried out on the basis of the 2011 Census, which put the population of J&K at 1.25 crore, with 56.2 per cent in Kashmir and 43.8 per cent in Jammu.
In fact, the Centre plan is now continuing to tweak the demography and voting percentage to suit itself under the Central rule and the local leaders of J&K can have little interventions as they are all under the Central rule. However, even after the elections the fight for restoration of J&K ‘special status’ and statehood is likely to go on.
With neighbouring Pakistan in economic slowdown and internal political turmoil, it is very unlikely that the foreign intervention during the elections will take place during the polls and it is probably the best opportune time for India to hold elections at the international border and bring back the peoples’ mandate to really prove that India is a ‘real democratic’ state.
