POLITICS: Pro-India Ruling Party Routed in Kashmir Polls

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 10 2002 (IPS) - The pro-India political party that rules Indian Kashmir has been routed in an election to elect a new assembly, one that is expected to play a key role in any negotiated settlement to end violent separatism in the disputed state.

The National Conference (NC) party, run by Kashmir’s dynastic Abdullah family, has been in power in Kashmir for most of the half last century.

With counting complete but undeclared on Thursday, the Congress party, which leads the national opposition, was poised to form a coalition government supported by the pro-independence People’ Democratic Party (PDP) and other smaller regional parties.

According to the latest available results, the Congress party bagged 21 seats and the PDP 15 in the 88-member assembly.

The alliance has already obtained the support of smaller groups like the Panther’s Party, with four seats, and the Marxist Communist Party, two seats.

The Congress party leader in Kashmir, Ghulam Nabi Azad, favoured to become chief minister, said in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital, that the new government’s first concern would be to restore peace and development to the Muslim-majority state, torn by more than 12 years of ‘jihadist’ militancy.

Another contender for the chief minister’s job, PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti, said a pledge made by Congress party president Sonia Gandhi during the election campaign – that there would be unconditional dialogue for peace, including with militant groups – may have swung votes in favour of the new Congress-PDP coalition.

The National Conference, currently allied with the pro-Hindu, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, will remain the largest single party in the new assembly with 28 seats. The party had two-thirds majority in Kashmir’s outgoing assembly.

The BJP itself suffered a humiliating defeat, managing to win just one seat.

Prominent Kashmir politician Saifuddin Soz said the poll results show that the National Conference and the BJP paid a price for ”political opportunism.” Soz, a former leader of the National Conference, quit when the party decided to support the BJP in forming a central government in New Delhi.

Soz, who switched allegiance to the Congress party, said the National Conference should have quit the ruling alliance the minute the BJP government rejected a demand for greater autonomy in Kashmir sought by a resolution passed by the Kashmir assembly two years ago.

According to Soz, the image of the National Conference suffered even more when it continued to stand by the Vajpayee government after the pogrom against Muslims with the complicity of a BJP government in western Gujarat state, earlier this year. More than 2,000 people died in the pogrom.

In New Delhi, Congress party general secretary and spokeswoman Ambika Soni said her nationalist party would have no problems in forming a coalition with the PDP despite its professed pro-independence stance.

”All their candidates swore by the Indian Constitution before filing their nominations,” she said.

Soni attributed Congress party’s success in the election to the voters’ faith in its ability to tackle militancy politically. ”We have brought about reconciliation in other militancy-hit parts of the country such as in Punjab and in the North-east,” she said.

But all the contestants, winners and losers were unanimous that the real winner of the Kashmir elections was democracy and the idea that Kashmir should continue to remain an Indian state.

Said National Conference party president, Omar Abdullah, who was himself defeated by a PDP candidate, ”The elections vindicated everything we (NC) have stood for including the view that the future of Kashmir lies with India.”

Abdullah, currently a minister in the Vajpayee Cabinet, is the son of outgoing chief minister Farooq Abdullah and the grandson of the late Sheikh Abdullah, an immensely popular politician who ensured that Kashmir joined India rather than Pakistan after the two countries were formed from a large British India in 1947.

The NC began losing its popularity when it was perceived that under its rule, Kashmir’s autonomy, guaranteed in the Indian Constitution, was being gradually whittled away. The party became truly unpopular after it allegedly rigged an election in 1987.

Simmering discontent in the state soon exploded into a full-fledged secessionist movement, supported by neighbouring Pakistan which has always contended that the territory should have gone to it on partition and has fought several wars with India over it.

Pakistan denies giving military support to militants who cross over from Pakistani-held Kashmir to the Indian side, saying it provides only moral support for a ”freedom struggle” in majority-Muslim Kashmir.

New Delhi’s response to the secessionist movement was to saturate Kashmir with troops and support the National Conference – but that only brought serious charges of human rights violations and made the party even more unpopular as charges of corruption and of election malpractice increased.

On Aug.15, Vajpayee pledged at an Independence Day rally that the just concluded elections would be free, fair and transparent. In Copenhagen on Thursday, while on a European tour, Vajpayee said his promise of free and fair elections in Kashmir had been fulfilled.

”Both before and during the course of the elections, I had stated that irrespective of which candidate or party won, the vote would be for India’s unity, integrity and democracy, it would be a vote for ‘Kashmiriyat’ (Kashmiriness) , and it would be a vote against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and Pakistan’s anti-India propaganda,” he said.

But though the elections are a personal victory for Vajpayee’s moderate policies, it was another electoral setback for the BJP. Although it remains in power at the centre, it has been steadily losing important state assembly elections to its arch rival, the Congress party that already rules 14 major states.

POLITICS: Pro-India Ruling Party Routed in Kashmir Polls

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 10 2002 (IPS) - The pro-India political party that rules Indian Kashmir has been routed in an election to elect a new assembly, one that is expected to play a key role in any negotiated settlement to end violent separatism in the disputed state.
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