The Srinagar Lok Sabha seat will vote on May 13 amid a poll fever in the once ‘boycott capital’ of Jammu & Kashmir, which saw less than 14% voting in 2019. Rare late-evening door-to-door campaigns, musical events at rallies and whirring vehicles of political parties have brought with it a paradigm shift in mainstream politics here. It is the first time in over 30 years that ideology and not the slogan of ‘sadak, bijli, pani‘ (road, electricity and water) have taken centre stage.
With neither the BJP nor the Congress fielding candidates in Srinagar, it remains a contest mainly between former allies, National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), of the People’s Alliance of the Gupkar Declaration, an amalgam forged to restore the pre-August 5, 2019 position. J&K Apni Party, which came into being after 2019, has fielded Ashraf Mir, a former PDP leader, as the candidate.
These elections are evenly poised between J&K’s two main traditional parties, the NC and the PDP, who are slugging it out over ideology to win votes in a constituency considered the bastion of separatists.
“Post-2019, despair and anxiety have been brewing in Srinagar because of a sense of disempowerment and the iron-hand approach of the security apparatus. Voting is providing a rare space of both catharsis and assertion after what happened to the people of Kashmir in 2019. This time the voting percentage will go up. It will also be a vote against the ongoing crackdown the Kashmiri society is facing at different levels,” Rayees Ahmad, a private school teacher from the old city, said.
Conscious of the violent past and the sense of political awareness among voters in Srinagar, both the NC and the PDP fielded candidates who are ideological vanguards. The NC’s Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi and the PDP’s Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra emerged as the main voices to represent their respective political parties’ ideological opposition to the BJP’s move to end J&K’s special constitutional position in 2019. Both young candidates, in their early 40s and 30s, have been able to hold a conversation with the disillusioned and alienated sections of the society through their poll rallies.
The speeches of Mr. Ruhullah, whose father was assassinated in 2000 in north Kashmir’s Magam area, after 2019 earned him the epithet of being “the moral compass” of the NC. He has managed to shape the party’s ideological discourse. “The reason the NC chose to give mandate to Mr. Ruhullah was because of his unwavering and unbending stand (after 2019). He preferred to speak the truth and stood by it and was rarely bothered about the consequences. He’s one who will fight for people’s dignity and identity, if voted, at the highest platform of the Parliament,” NC vice-president Omar Abdullah, who spoke recently at a poll rally at Srinagar’s Badamwari, said.
It was for the first-time the former J&K Chief Minister made it to a poll rally in Srinagar’s Sangeen Darwaza, once a no-go zone for mainstream parties because of the sway held by militants and separatists in and around the old city. The past three decades witnessed a significant impact of the boycott call of separatists in Srinagar. However, no separatist or militant outfit has issued a boycott call this time.
In south Kashmir’s highly volatile pockets of Tahab, Chandgam, Begpora and Karimabad in Pulwama, which saw scores of recruitments of locals into militant ranks since 2013 and deaths of civilians in street protests, PDP’s Mr. Parra is making a rare attempt to strike a chord with the population known for its deep sense of alienation and anger. He managed to hold late-evening poll rallies in pockets that saw multiple militant attacks in the run-up to the elections in 2019.
“I want to break the silence imposed on people after 2019. Parigam village like other parts of Pulwama has suffered a lot. We will talk about the youth, who face FIRs and have police cases against them. We will fight for our land. We will end the persecution,” Mr. Parra said in the once militancy-dominated pocket of Pulwama.
Mr. Parra, who was jailed for 19 months under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act after his arrest in 2020, is able to connect with those who have suffered. “I am able to connect with many. I understand your pain,” he said.
First-time voters hold key
It’s not just two lakh voters in the age group of 18-20, out of 17.40 lakh, who qualify to be first-time voters in Srinagar. A large section of those who boycotted elections for ideological reasons are likely to become first-time voters this time. They are expected to largely determine the winner among 24 candidates in the fray.
