POLITICS-INDIA: Kashmir Awaits New Govt after Unclear Poll Verdict

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 14 2002 (IPS) - Kashmiris are waiting for two political parties, both victorious in the just concluded state assembly elections, to decide which of them would get to lead the next government in the state torn by a 12-years of violent secessionism.

An informal alliance between the parties – the powerful Congress party and the regional People’s Democratic Party (PDP – resulted in a humiliating defeat for the National Conference party.

The party has monopolised power in the state for the last 27 years and remains the single biggest party after poll results were declared on Friday.

The National Conference has 28 seats in the 87-seat assembly, while the Congress Party has 21 and the PDP 15. Smaller regional parties and independents opposed to the NC and supportive of the Congress party have the rest.

The elections recorded a 45 percent voter turnout in spite of death threats from militant groups that would like to see the Muslim-majority state accede to Pakistan.

Pakistan-based ‘jihadist’ groups are said to be behind the assassination of some 45 political workers, including the state’s law minister, after the elections were called in August.

Outgoing Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah, who initially said his NC would sit in the opposition, told journalists in Srinagar, the state capital, on Monday that he would stake claim to form a government in the event the PDP and the Congress Party failed to agree on the leadership issue.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, chosen Monday as the Congress party’s chief ministerial candidate, said his party should lead the government because of its national stature as the main opposition party and one which already enjoyed power in 14 major states.

But Azad, though a Muslim, is from the Hindu-dominated Jammu region of Kashmir and regarded as an outsider in the Kashmir valley, where the secessionist movement is concentrated.

The Congress party is also unpopular in the valley and shares the opprobrium of having joined hands with the National Conference in rigging an election in 1986, an event that caused the secessionist movement to turn violent two years later.

More than 50,000 people are believed to have died as Indian security forces, often brutally, countered the separatists, supported by ‘jihadist’ militants based in Pakistan, which has for more than 50 years claimed to rule Kashmir and occupies a third of it.

The two countries have also fought three wars over the territory, the last in 1999 along the Line of Control (LoC) that separates the Indian and Pakistan controlled parts of Kashmir.

As a nationalist party, the Congress may have difficulty forging a common programme with the pro-independence PDP, led by Mufti Mohammed Syed, the other claimant for the chief ministership.

Azad said he has been pledged the support of smaller parties and independents, though a simple majority of 44 still eluded him. ”We would prefer to have an alliance with the PDP and we are continuing to negotiate with it,” he said.

Syed’s daughter Mehbooba Mufti, the most visible leader of the PDP, has already said that her party’s main priority would be to see to the disbanding of the much-hated special operations group, which functions as the main anti-terrorist cell of Kashmir’s police force.

The PDP has promised to repeal the use of draconian anti-terrorist laws in the state, which have allowed security forces sweeping powers of arrest and detention and are alleged to have been used for extortion and harassment of ordinary people.

”We cannot compromise on our agenda,” Mehbooba said.

During the poll campaign, Congress party president Sonia Gandhi pledged that her party, if elected to power, would open a dialogue with all sections, including militant groups, to find a political settlement to secessionism in Kashmir.

While the PDP has proved its popularity in the Kashmir valley, it is not represented in the Jammu region or in the Buddhist-dominated Ladakh region of the state.

There have been demands by Hindu fundamentalist groups for Kashmir’s division into three sections on a religious basis. But apparently, this has no appeal in the state – the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the federal government, managed to get just one seat in the Kashmir elections.

The BJP’s unpopularity could also be the result of the federal government’s rejection of a resolution passed by the Kashmir assembly two years ago demanding greater autonomy.

That may also have led to the downfall of the National Conference, which remained allied to the BJP in spite of the rejection of the autonomy call.

The National Conference’s continuation in the BJP-led coalition, the National Democratic Alliance, after its objection to autonomy ”has had a bearing on the people’s thinking,” admitted Omar Abdullah, son of Farooq Abdullah and the party’s chief ministerial candidate.

Significantly, on Monday, the younger Abdullah resigned from his job as minister in the federal government in what many see as a parting of ways of the ideologically dissimilar parties of the NC and the BJP.

However, Abdullah said the NC would remain in the National Democratic Alliance.

Meanwhile, India’s Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani has indicated that with the Kashmir elections now safely over, the massive troop deployment on the Indo-Pakistan border may now be withdrawn. India moved 700,000 troops to the border after a December attempt to blow up the its Parliament, which New Delhi links to Islamabad-based groups.

Advani said a decision is due at a Wednesday meeting of the National Security Advisory Board, but ruled out any early resumption of diplomatic dialogue with Pakistan. ”Cross-border terrorism (by Pakistan) and dialogue cannot go together,” he said.

The two countries came close to war in May after the assassination of moderate Kashmir leader Abdul Ghani Lone and an attack on an army garrison in Jammu city in the state.

Intense international diplomacy led by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell pulled the two countries from the brink of war and a possible nuclear exchange by June.

Last week, Powell said that he would like to ”re-engage India and Pakistan” once the elections in Kashmir in September and October, and Pakistan just last week, are over.

POLITICS-INDIA: Kashmir Awaits New Govt after Unclear Poll Verdict

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 14 2002 (IPS) - Kashmiris are waiting for two political parties, both victorious in the just concluded state assembly elections, to decide which of them would get to lead the next government in the state torn by a 12-years of violent secessionism.
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