Srinagar sways to the sights and sounds of campaign
A woman uses the vote-from-home facility in Srinagar on Thursday.
The Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency will vote on May 13 amid a poll fever in the once “boycott capital” of Jammu and 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 rst time in over 30 years that ideology, and not the slogan of “sadak, bijli, pani” (road, electricity and water), has taken centre stage.
With neither the BJP nor the Congress elding candidates, it remains a contest mainly between former allies, National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration, an amalgam forged to restore the pre-August 5, 2019 position of the Union Territory. The J&K Apni Party, which came into being after 2019, has elded 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.
“This time the voting percentage will go up. It will also be a vote against the ongoing crackdown the Kashmiri society is facing at dierent levels,” Rayees Ahmad, a private school teacher from the old city, said.
Ideological vanguards
Conscious of the violent past and the sense of political awareness among voters in Srinagar, both the NC and the PDP elded 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.
The post-2019 speeches of Mr. Ruhullah, whose father was assassinated in 2000 in the Magam area of north Kashmir, earned him the reputation of being “the moral compass” of the NC. He has managed to shape the party’s ideological discourse. “He is one who will ght for people’s dignity and identity, if voted, at the highest platform of Parliament,” NC vice-president Omar Abdullah said at a poll rally at Badamwari in Srinagar.
Breaking silence
In the highly volatile pockets of south
Kashmir such as Tahab, Chandgam, Begpora and Karimabad in Pulwama, which saw recruitment of scores of local people into militant ranks since 2013 and deaths of civilians in street protests, Mr. Parra is making a rare attempt to strike a chord with the population known for its deep sense of alienation and anger. He has managed to hold late-evening poll rallies in pockets that saw multiple militant attacks in the run-up to the election in 2019.
“I want to break the silence imposed on people after 2019... We will ght for our land. We will end the persecution,” Mr. Parra said.
It’s not just two lakh voters in the age group of 18-20, out of 17.4 lakh, who qualify to be rst-time voters in Srinagar. A large section of those who boycotted elections for ideological reasons in the past are likely to become rst-time voters this time.