J&K polls: Omar Abdullah's mind games and PDP's dilemma
Jammu and Kashmir elections have thrown many surprises. Contrary to expectations that Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would sweep Kashmir and win almost all 46 seats of the Valley, the party found itself at a tally of 28. It is now at a crossroads - whether to form a government in coalition with BJP or not.
Since the BJP had no presence or cadre in the Valley, it was a forgone conclusion that the party would not make any significant breakthrough in Kashmir and its Mission 44+ would remain mission impossible.
The unpredictable Kashmiri voter, who turned out in huge numbers, sabotaged the prospects of PDP to form the government on its own, as did the perception of the PDP leadership that the anti-incumbency wave was only against Omar Abdullah led coalition government and PDP MLAs were exempt from it.
The party paid a price for ignoring anti-incumbency against its own MLAs especially in South Kashmir, which is considered the party’s bastion.
The PDP thought it would win all the 16 seats in South Kashmir but got a rude shock as four of its sitting MLAs lost, two to Congress candidates. In Kulgam constituency of South Kashmir sitting MLA Muhammad Yousuf Tarigami of CPI(M) won by a margin of 300 votes, defeating his nearest rival from the PDP.
In the Valley too, voters kept political parties guessing.
Sopore is known as the bastion of separatist politics. It is the hometown of senior separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani. One of the reasons given by Omar Abdullah for his dismal performance in the present elections was the hanging of Parliament attack convict Muhammad Afzal Guru, who was also from Sopore. Even though Guru was hanged during the tenure of the Congress-led government at the Centre, Sopore elected a Congress candidate from the constituency.
Former separatist-turned-mainstream-leader, Sajjad Gani Lone met Prime Minister Narendra Modi before the polls in New Delhi. After the meeting, Lone described the PM as his “elder brother". Both the PDP and the National Conference condemned Lone for meeting the PM. Both the mainstream regional parties thought they would defeat Lone and his party candidates by using Modi and the BJP card against him. Lone instead said he was not ashamed of meeting Modi. He said he "marketed" Modi during the campaign. He not only won his own seat but his party candidate also won from Kupwara constituency.
Habbakadal constituency of Srinagar with around 16,000 Kashmiri migrant voters was seen as a BJP stronghold. It was propagated that all votes of Kashmiri Pandits would go to the BJP. Nothing of that sort happened. The winning candidate from Habbakadal polled 4,955 votes, while BJP candidate Moti Koul polled 2,596 votes. In Amirakadal, Tral and Sopore, with a large number of migrant voters, Kashmiri Pandits didn’t turn up to vote in large numbers, and instead of the BJP, these seats went to PDP, NC and Congress respectively, restricting the BJP to 25 seats.
A day ahead of the elections, chief minister Omar Abdullah, who is now playing mind games on Twitter with both the PDP and BJP, stated that given certain events during his tenure, including the hanging of Parliament attack convict Muhammad Afzal Guru and the killing of 112 youths at the hands of police and security forces in 2010, the PDP should have won 44 seats. And when it didn’t and NC got 17 seats, including two seats of independent candidates the party was supporting, Abdullah felt like a winner. He now says he is waiting for a call from either BJP president Amit Shah or PDP patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. He says he will seek the advice of his party in case either calls - and has not promised support to anyone.
In the 2008 elections, the NC had won 28 seats. The party has now been reduced to 15. Still Abdullah feels he is a winner as electoral results have thrown up a hung Assembly where nobody is a clear winner. If the PDP allies with BJP, both the parties have to then say goodbye to their long standing political agendas like abrogation of Article 370 in case of BJP and self-rule for J&K in case of the PDP - whether they can do it and still satisfy their core constituency has to be seen.
If NC and the BJP decide to go together, it would be a minority government as the NC has only 17 seats while the BJP 25. Though Abdullah says the proposition of his party supporting BJP is unlikely, he is giving sleepless nights to the PDP by saying there is a one per cent chance that this could happen. The Congress party is also keen to be part of coalition government with the PDP, but again it will be a minority government which any independent member supporting the coalition can pull down any time.
If the PDP allies with the saffron party, this confluence of saffron and green would be a new experiment not only in J&K politics but in national politics as well, as it will be the first time that the BJP would be aligning with a Muslim party.
But then there are huge risks involved for both the parties as Omar Abdullah and the NC would tear apart PDP in Kashmir Valley for allying with BJP and the Congress would take on the BJP in Jammu for allying with PDP, with its self-rule agenda. Besides the BJP and PDP would have to chalk out whether it would be Mufti Mohammad Sayeed heading the new government or a chief minister from Jammu, and whether BJP’s urge to be part of coalition government, for the first time in J&K, would force it to give up the chief ministerial claim, and let Mufti govern for next six years as the BJP has no regional leader of stature comparable to Mufti in in the state.