Election brings cheer & hope in J&K’s Shia town

There is a wave of happiness among the voters in this predominantly Shia town, about 15 km west of Kashmiri capital Srinagar, but more avid appears to be Tanvir Hussein, a senior citizen who lives in a tiny but nice house of exposed bricks and timber built on a sloped land here.

“I didn’t vote in any of the elections in the past nearly three decades. But this time I’m going to vote with all pleasure and excitement,” he told this newspaper. Mr Hussein is a sworn supporter of Jammu and Kashmir Anjuman-eSharie Shian, a religiopolitical organisation of Shia Muslims based here in Budgam.

As a constituent of the separatist amalgam Hurriyat Conference, the Anjuman endorsed its boycott call in every election that was held in the past be it for the Lok Sabha or the Assembly of the erstwhile state, leaving Mr Hussein with no choice but to follow the diktat.

Kashmiri watchers say that it was because of a combination of fear of and sympathy for the separatists that the post-1989 Kashmir Valley witnessed the least participative polls and the lowest voter turnouts in its history.

But this time there is no poll boycott call from any separatist political or militant group and the people here and elsewhere in the Valley are going to vote without facing any such dilemma.

However, Fatima bint Hassan, another resident, says she did not care about the separatists’ boycott call even when defying their diktats was fraught with hazards. “Though the situation here in Budgam was different as compared to the rest of the Valley, the threat of being harassed was ever-present,” she said.

In the 2002 Assembly elections, Ms Fatima chose to vote for Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, a member of the Budgam’s influential Aga family, considering him a “victim of terrorism”. Mr Mehdi’s father Aga Syed Mehdi was killed in an IED blast on November 3, 2000 at neighbouring Kanihama, the incident blamed on separatist militants by the police.