Srinagar, August 18 (SocialNews.XYZ) The announcement by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to hold three-phase assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir seems to have stirred up a hornet’s nest among the political parties in the Union Territory.

Immediately after the announcement by the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) in New Delhi, a kind of upheaval took place in the political parties. The most affected by this development are the newly formed parties such as the Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) led by former Prime Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, the J&K Apni Party led by Syed Altaf Bukhari and the People’s Conference (PC) led by Sajad Gani Lone.

Taj Mohiuddin, a senior politician and close aide of Azad, said on Saturday that he would rejoin the Congress after announcing his resignation from the DPAP.

Taj left the Congress immediately after Azad’s departure. This will be a sort of “homecoming” for the top politician.

Azad did not field a candidate in the Lok Sabha elections in Kashmir. However, his candidate GM Saroori from Jammu’s Kathua-Udhampur constituency lost the Lok Sabha election to Dr Jitendra Singh of the BJP.

As expected, Azad’s departure from the Congress, with which he had been associated for almost 50 years, ultimately proved to be very costly.

According to reports, Ghulam Nabi Azad is most likely to rejoin the Congress party.

The J&K Apni Party fielded its candidates Mohammad Ashraf Mir in Srinagar and Zafar Iqbal Manhas for the Anantnag-Rajouri constituency in the Lok Sabha, and both the candidates lost by a wide margin.

Both the candidates lost their deposits in the Lok Sabha elections. Worse still, the J&K Apni Party did not get a majority of votes in either of the two Lok Sabha constituencies.

Sajad Gani Lone of the PC contested for the Baramulla seat in the Lok Sabha. Both Sajad and former chief minister and National Conference (NC) vice-president Omar Abdullah were defeated by jailed Awami Ittehad Party founder Engineer Abdul Rashid Sheikh.

However, Sajad Gani Lone and Omar Abdullah received a respectable number of votes and were both able to save their bail.

Choudhary Zulfiqar Ali, a senior politician and former minister of J&K Apni Party, met Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday and is likely to join the BJP soon.

The BJP is firmly entrenched in the Jammu constituency but is still trying to find a base in the Kashmir Valley.

The Congress has a reasonable presence in Kashmir, but in the parliamentary elections it will face a crucial contest with the BJP in the Jammu constituency.

Farooq Abdullah’s NC has a strong presence in the Valley (Kashmir) and also has a considerable political base in the Muslim-dominated constituencies of Jammu.

This is the obvious situation, but this may not be the end of the story.

Engineer Rashid has already emerged as a potential challenge for the NC in Kupwara, Bandipora and Baramulla districts.

Sources close to Engineer Rashid told IANS that the jailed politician is likely to field candidates of his party in these three districts.

In the districts of Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipora, Engineer Rashid can upset the otherwise firmly rooted NC.

It is also likely that the separatists, especially members of the banned Jamaat-e-Islami, could field proxy candidates in the south Kashmir districts of Shopian, Kulgam, Anantnag and Pulwama due to their dissatisfaction with Pakistan.

To believe that Jamaat-e-Islami representatives cannot win seats in the Assembly would be like behaving like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand.

Youths from Jamaati families who joined the militancy were either killed or arrested to prevent them from disturbing public order.

If the Jamaati youth decide to participate in the parliamentary elections on their own without declaring affiliation with the Jamaat, it is constitutionally and legally impossible to prevent them from joining the democratic space.

The assumption that these youths would not gain public support because of their affiliation with Jamaati families may prove to be wrong in view of the past.

In 1987, all political parties opposed to North Carolina contested the parliamentary elections, and nothing short of blatant electoral fraud on the part of the then North Carolina government prevented the conglomerate Muslim United Front (MUF) from winning a significant number of seats.

What the anti-NC forces failed to achieve in 1987 can be achieved in 2024 if the ECI guarantees completely free, fair and fear-free elections.

The PDP, led by former Prime Minister Mehbooba Mufti, may be at rock bottom but it is far from finished. It can still win a few seats and make its presence felt.

The Jammu and Kashmir Assembly has 90 seats, of which 74 are for the general population, nine for the Scheduled Tribes and seven for the Scheduled Castes.

Given the scenario described, it would be politically naive for the NC or any other party to believe that achieving a simple majority of 45 seats would be a piece of cake.

The fate of all political parties lies in the hands of the voters, and to believe that voters would line up unanimously for a single political party would be an impossible assumption.

Source: IANS