New developments making concluding part of campaigning interesting in south Kashmir

Srinagar, Sep 15: With only two days left for polling in the first phase of assembly elections, some new developments are making the concluding part of the campaigning interesting in south Kashmir constituencies.

Tomorrow is the last day of campaigning there and political parties, their candidates and independents are busy making last efforts to motivate the voters to vote for them. Till now it was mainly the campaigning by the National Conference (NC), PDP, Congress, CPI (M), Apni Party, Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP), People’s Conference (PC) and independents. But after the release of Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) Chief and Member of Parliament (MP), Er Rashid, from jail on interim bail, his campaigning for his party candidates has added a new dimension to the polls.

Having recently won the Baramulla Lok Sabha seat and defeating National Conference (NC) Vice President Omar Abdullah with a big margin, Rashid intends to recreate that magic in south Kashmir also now. Whether he can do so in this short time and to what extent, all will be known on the election result day on October 8. Right now he is trying to take head-on the leadership of two major parties National Conference and PDP besides the Congress. The MP is also criticising the BJP for the August 5, 2019 decisions.

The leadership and cadres of NC and PDP are busy trying to neutralise the Er Rashid effect in the poll arena by launching a counter political onslaught against him.

After the polling in south Kashmir constituencies on September 18, the focus will shift further to central Kashmir and north Kashmir. The central Kashmir assembly constituencies will go to polls in the second phase on September 25 and those of north Kashmir in the third and last phase on October 1.

While the traditional political parties in Kashmir are presently busy tackling the new emerging situation and surprising challenges, were they actually prepared or not for the present scenario?  And if they were prepared what preparations in advance they had made in this direction and what strategies they had chalked out for this purpose?

Going by the present scene, the National Conference, PDP and Congress are finding themselves in a tight spot and facing some kind of difficulty in properly handling the new challenges. It seems that even if they might have had some kind of indication of what was going to happen, they had not done their homework properly and completely. Maybe they were too complacent and had taken things for granted.

The traditional parties are now trying to race against the time to readjust themselves in the electoral arena to counter the sudden and dramatic political onslaught.

They fought the parliamentary polls and till very recently were contesting assembly elections the same way as they used to do earlier. They believed that only they were the real key players in Kashmir's electoral politics.

NC, confident of its supremacy, was aiming at targetting the PDP to weaken it further in elections. PDP, seemingly lacking confidence, felt that it was NC's game in the present assembly election. Subsequently, the party’s efforts were to retrieve some of the ground (lost after forming a coalition government with the BJP after the 2014 assembly polls) and get some seats to be at a respectable place.  Congress preferred to secure seats in Kashmir through the alliance with NC rather than focussing more on Jammu to reduce the kitty of BJP there.

Some political circles say that the traditional parties failed to correctly read the changing scene on the ground before the surprise and dramatic arrival of new players in the poll arena at the eleventh hour.  Going by their lack of adjustments in advance, they seem to have been caught unawares.

Omar Abdullah, who till recently was saying that the NC-Congress alliance will form the government is now viewing that BJP can form the government if people in Kashmir allowed the division of their votes.

The presence of some of the former members of the banned Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) in the electoral fray was also out of the syllabus for the traditional parties. Some other independent candidates are also claiming to have the support of banned JeI. There are also reports about some kind of understanding and arrangement on some seats between AIP and ex-members of banned JeI in Kashmir.

PDP President Mehbooba Mufti had initially welcomed the participation of ex-members of banned JeI in the electoral fray. But now she is urging the former senior leaders of JeI to clarify to the people whether the contestants really belong to their banned organisation or not.

The present assembly poll is full of surprises and suspense and more so in Kashmir and every political party is trying hard to win the support of the people.