The present Assembly elections ends the six-year political stasis in J&K. Expectedly, there is heightened political activity and interest among the electorate. The demand of statehood unites the entire former state with its huge ethnic, religious and geographical diversity. On surface, there is a plenty of newness around with new political actors, new constitutional realities and a new set of political realities. At the same time, when one digs deeper, J&K continues to remain a complex tangle with diverse ethnic groups and interplay of many forces and interests. Article 370 abrogation has not changed some of these structural realities and forces, and they still shape the selection of candidates and campaign narrative. They will possibly leave their imprint on the election result as well and broader future of this volatile region of South Asia.
In 1977 Assembly elections, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Sheikh Abdullah had appealed to the people that they should be prepared to go hungry rather than beg for forty paise subsidy on rice from the central government. The center had taken away the subsidy given to the state and people wanted Sheikh to get the subsidy back. Sheikh refused to do so.
The National Conference (NC) swept 39 out of Kashmir’s 42 seats, seven of Jammu’s 32 and one of Ladakh’s two in the elections of June 1977, an electoral contest which was mainly fought between three major political parties namely National Conference, Indian National Congress and Janata Party. The elections is recorded as the first most free and fair elections in state’s history. The response from the people indicated that emotional and psychological appeals aimed at self-dignity are potent than material promises. Now, after forty-seven-years, a similar collective urge for self-respect unites not just the Kashmir Valley but also large sections of Jammu’s electorate as the two regions yearn for the restoration of complete statehood.
J&K was one of the largest princely states in British India and since independence the region has defined the peace and security challenge in South Asia. In terms of population, J&K is 20th out of 36 States and Union Territories but its elections has always commanded national as well as international attention. The present elections in J&K are no less significant than 1977 though the context is quite different. The State does not exist, with its special status, its own constitution and special flag all gone. At a practical level, there is no timeframe and, more importantly, no commitment to restoring full statehood. The promise to the Supreme court doesn’t have a definite date. This could mean Jammu and Kashmir may end up like Delhi, where ‘statehood’ means the perennial turf war between the central government and its LG.
Based on the experience of the last five-years, where the Assembly elections were delayed on one pretext or the other, the electorate doesn’t buy the center’s assurance of restoration of statehood. Still, the elections have electrified the environment. The aaya ram gaya ram (turncoating) is playing out with enthusiasm everyday across J&K and no political party is an exception. Candidates are leaving and joining the rival parties at the last moment on the condition of getting a party mandate.
Coming to specifics, the NC with its inter-generational cadre has an advantage in Central Kashmir (Srinagar and Budgam) both in the urban as well as rural areas. In the valley, the number 28 became important in the last three assembly segments as the NC in 2002, NC in 2009 and PDP in 2014 Assembly elections had this number. In north Kashmir, buoyant by his win in the 2024 Parliamentary elections, Engineer Rashid’s party Awami Ittehad Party expects to win a few segments, where the party has some structure that led to his victory in the Baramulla Parliamentary constituency. The ethnic mosaic of J&K doesn’t leave the valley untouched as one reaches north-west frontiers of the valley. Gujjars and Pahari speaking population inhabit peripheral segments of relatively homogenous valley such as Uri and Karen bordering Pakistan administered Jammu Kashmir, a region which is completely non-Kashmiri speaking region. Here, the NC has an upper hand because of the cadre.
In South Kashmir, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is aiming to hold on to its base as it has done in the last three assembly elections. Jamaat-e-Islami allied individuals are contesting independently. Four of its former members filed their nomination papers as independent candidates in the first phase from Kulgam, Devsar, Zainapora and Pulwama segments. All the parties in valley are outspoken on removing ban on Jamaat-e-Islami. In this realm, it will be interesting to see how this impacts the fortunes of PDP as the Jamaat-e-Islami has favored the PDP since 2002 elections. The linkage originated in a particular context as the counter militancy wing of J&K police Special operations Group (SoG) targeted the Jamaat which was seen harboring Hizbul Mujaihdeen militants. The PDP had promised to disband SoG, though after coming to power the PDP merely changed the nomenclature. For all practical reasons, the Congress party’s stakes in the valley are in a few segments in South Kashmir.
Coming to the south of Pir Panjal, which is far more diverse in terms of ethnicity, geographically and religion, the BJP is eyeing 31 Hindu majority segments out of Jammu province’s 45 segments. Till 2014, the BJP was restricted to some urban segments. From 2014, the unprecedented religious consolidation in its favour catapulted it to become one of the main players in J&K. The BJP is concentrating in the plains or low-altitude areas, which is a Dogri speaking belt and electorally the most significant.
The erstwhile hilly Doda region with eight seats is the laboratory of BJP’s strategy of polarizing the electorate in J&K. That is why a friendly contest in three out of five seats namely Bhaderwah, Banihal and Doda in the Doda region nullifies the advantage of the alliance between the Congress and NC to some extent. For instance, Bhaderwah, one of the most literate areas of J&K, is evenly distributed between Hindus and Muslims, and the victory margins in this segment are historically small between the BJP and Congress. In the seats such as Bhaderwah, Doda west, Ramban and Padder–Nagseni, the BJP is likely to bank upon religious consolidation in its favour. The delimitation of segments is a classic case of gerrymandering. The commission seems to have carved out new ones that can potentially enrich the BJP vote bank. It is more visible in Padder, Doda west, Banihal-Gool and Ramban segments.
Repeating the all-India trend, as witnessed during the 2024 Parliamentary elections, the BJP has given candidature to senior members of the parties that were till recently its ideologically arch rivals. This include deserters, who had been legislators, from the National Conference, the PDP and even Congress party. The fact that the only serious contender in the former CM G.N. Azad camp, G.M. Saroori filed as an independent candidate demonstrates that Azad’s party is a non-starter electorally.
Political reservations
While regional parties such as the NC and PDP are hitting at the BJP for taking away statehood, the BJP expectedly is illustrating the benefits of abrogation of Article 370 such as political reservation to the Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes. The fact is that these reservations bring little change to the potential power structure. Political reservation for the SCs already existed in the previous J&K Assembly. Several key ministers from J&K came from reserved seats for SCs. They include former Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand and Cabinet Minister Mula Ram from the Congress. Members of the SC community — mostly in Jammu, where they are nearly 18 per cent of the province’s population — were the beneficiaries of the 1950s’ progressive land reforms in J&K. Second, it is true that delimitation would facilitate reservation of seats for the STs. The main beneficiaries should be the Gujjars, who are Muslims as they are more than 90 percent of the ST population in J&K. In the last Assembly election, without political reservations, Gujjar candidates were elected in the Lolab and Kangan Assembly segments in the Kashmir Valley. In Jammu, the Assembly segments of Surankote, Mendhar, Rajouri, Gulabgarh, Darhal, Kalakote and Gool Arnas were represented by Gujjar candidates. This time, the ST seats are Kangan, Gurez and Kokernag in Kashmir valley whereas Budhal, Rajouri, Thanamandi, Surankote, Mendhar and Gulabgarh in Jammu.
As per the 2011 Census, the population of Gujjars is around nine per cent of the total population of the former state. This number is less than 10.8 per cent of the community’s representation in the previous J&K Assembly, if one excludes the four seats of Ladakh, which is now a separate UT. The political parties have little incentive to give a higher mandate to ST candidates than what they are required to do as per the legislative change. So, the de facto reality is that the Gujjar representation in the upcoming Assembly of J&K would be the same or even less as it was in the last Assembly that was elected in 2014. Post-abrogation of Article 370, Pahari community, living in Rajouri-Poonch, were given the ST status but a Pahari candidate can win only in Surankote and Rajouri segments as these segments alternate between someone from Gujjar and Pahari community. For instance, Surankote segment is a contest between former Minister Mushtaq Bukhari, a Pahari speaker, who quit the NC to join BJP, and clan of late Chowdhary Aslam, a Congress Gujjar leader and former speaker of the J&K assembly.
Shina speaking community, which is in a majority in Gurez assembly segment, had been given the ST status and most likely, someone from the community will win the elections in this segment like previous elections. Therefore, on paper, there is political reservation to the ST communities in J&K but on the ground there will be no practical change in terms of ST representation in the assembly. In fact, if one goes granular, post-delimitation and reservation to Pahari community, Gujjar representation in the future assemblies will be, in normal circumstance, always less than their highest number of nine in the 2014 assembly elections. This is because Gool-Arnas segment, which was represented by Gujjar candidate or a Kashmiri speaking candidate, has now been spilt after delimitation. Gool is added to overwhelming Muslim majority Banihal assembly segment, which is a Kashmiri speaking and Pogali speaking belt, and Arnas appended to Reasi segment, which is a Dogri speaking segment with a sizeable Hindu majority.
The delimitation has some importance in the context of a possible on redrawing of some Assembly segments. Some of the J&K Assembly segments have indeed become bloated, particularly in the urban parts of the capital cities of Jammu and Srinagar. The two largest Assembly segments in J&K are in Jammu city with 1.6 lakh voters in Gandhi Nagar and 1.5 lakh voters in Jammu West whereas the third largest Assembly segment is in Kashmir which is the Batamaloo Assembly segment with 1.2 lakh voters.
Nominated seats
But what can be potentially contentious is the delimitation commission’s provision of at least two seats (including one for a woman) in the Assembly from among Kashmiri
migrants. It has also recommended that displaced persons from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir get one seat in the Assembly. There is also a provision for nomination of two women in the J&K Assembly. This bring the number of nominated seats to five.
The legislative rights of nominated members in the legislature are not clear. The case of reservation for the Anglo-Indian community in State legislatures under the repealed Article 333 of the Constitution has raised several controversies, particularly in the situation of a vote of no-confidence. The higher courts had to adjudicate on this constitutional issue as the political executive facing a vote of no-confidence instrumentalized the nomination provision to boost its numbers. The recommendations for nominations for migrants also raises interesting normative as well as practical questions.
In 1947, Pakistan-controlled Kashmir migrants were displaced in an environment of bloodshed on both sides of the Line of Control and the neighbouring Punjab province. While the majority of Muslim displacement was concentrated in and around the Jammu plains and neighbouring western Punjab, (now Pakistan), there was a migration of 31,619 Hindu and Sikh families from various parts of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir as well. Of the latter, 26,319 families ‘opted to settle’ within J&K, with 3,600 families going to urban areas (primarily Jammu, Udhampur and Nowshera), and 21,116 to rural areas. A section of the community took refuge in various parts of the country, including the Pathankot area of the Gurdaspur district in Indian Punjab, the Yol area of the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, Agra town in Uttar Pradesh and in the Lajpat Nagar locality in New Delhi.
Unlike migrants from provinces such as present-day Punjab or Sindh in Pakistan, these communities got relief—and not compensation—for the properties they left across the Line of Control. The logic is that as India is committed to get back that region, giving compensation would dilute its claim. These communities were rehabilitated in the 1960s in the western part of Jammu city, the winter capital of J&K, whereas in Delhi, one pocket they were rehabilitated in was the Lajpat Nagar area in South Delhi. Within J&K, the areas of settlement for these communities was dictated by ethnicity, language, and, possibly, the preferences of the contemporary political elites. The bulk of present-day Pakistan-controlled Kashmir was a part of the Jammu province, which was much more populous than the Kashmir province before 1947. In fact, the bulk of displacement of Hindus and Sikhs in 1947 was intra-provincial. The reality is different for the majority of displaced Muslims, for they settled in neighbouring Pakistani Punjab and not Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. However, even the Hindu and Sikh migrants from the Muzaffarabad district, which in administrative terms was part of Kashmir province before 1947, were not settled in the Kashmir valley, where they had initially moved after violence forced them to leave. They were settled nearly 300 km across the Pir Panjal mountains, in Jammu city, which was culturally and linguistically relatively akin.
There is also conundrum in defining who constitutes migrants even from among the Pakistan-controlled Kashmiri migrants. The youngest person from this category of people, who was born in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, will be 75 years old. Practically, the beneficiaries of the nomination (to the Assembly) will be the second and third-generation, born in different parts of India. There is also the question of those born to parents, one of whom did not belong to Pakistan-controlled Kashmir while the other did. Obviously, patriarchal model will violate Article 15 of the Indian constitution, which secures citizens from every sort of discrimination by the State on the grounds of gender.
Coming to the suggestion of nominating Kashmiri migrants, the issue is less complex. The migration from Kashmir valley is only 34 years old in contrast to 75 years of migration from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Apart from the J&K Legislative Assembly, the Kashmiri Pandit community members had been elected to both Houses of Parliament. For instance, late PL Handoo, a former National Conference minister, won the 1989 election for the Indian Parliament from the Anantnag parliamentary constituency in poll marred by low voting turnout. DP Dhar, who played an important role during Indira Gandhi’s tenure as prime minister, particularly during the 1971-72 Shimla Accord between India and Pakistan, was elected as a member of the Upper House of Parliament in 1972.
No doubt, J&K’s present landscape is surcharged with political activity after six-years of dormancy. There is a plenty of newness around such as surfeit of new political actors, new constitutional realities and a new set of political realities. However, irrespective of the loud claims, the past has not disappeared as it continues to shape the present. This include the overall structural realities that are leaving their imprint on the present electoral landscape and will also potentially impact the future developments.
(Luv Puri has authored two books on J&K, including Uncovered face of militancy (Bibliophile South Asia) and Across the Line of Control (Columbia University Press).)
Published - September 01, 2024 06:43 am IST
