With NC and PDP deciding to contest the LS polls independently, the INDIA bloc’s unity bid has drawn a blank in the Valley. Meanwhile, the polls are set to decide the fates of valley heavyweights such as Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and Ghulam Nabi Azad. A report by Riyaz Wani
As the election campaign for Lok Sabha heats up in Jammu and Kashmir, the opposition parties are finding it increasingly difficult to retain any semblance of unity. The party interests have forced political outfits to go their separate ways. So much so that neither INDIA Alliance nor People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), originally formed to advocate for the restoration of Article 370, have survived.
To begin with, the National Conference (NC) decided to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections independently. In the last parliamentary polls, the NC had won the three seats from Kashmir Valley while the two seats in Jammu division and the one in Ladakh in the then undivided J&K were won by the BJP. The NC refused to part with its Valley seats and decided to support Congress in two seats in Jammu, now that Ladakh is a separate union territory.
In response to the NC’s decision, the PDP has also decided to contest the three Valley seats. This will split the votes among the three parties. Votes will further fragment with the other non-allied parties like People’s Conference, Apni Party and Democratic Azad Party – seen as close to the BJP – also throwing their hat in the ring. This will be a certain advantage for the BJP which will fight all the six seats in J&K and Ladakh.
Incidentally, the NC and the PDP are also part of the Peoples Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD). The PAGD, formed with an objective of ensuring restoration of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, faces an internal challenge as its constituent members which also include CPIM and Awami National Conference grapple with divergent interests and ambitions. But ever since its formation in 2020, the PAGD has become a distant memory, with the constituent parties not even meeting, let alone talking about the restoration of Article 370.
As things stand, a significant opinion in the NC and the PDP has grown increasingly skeptical about their alliance and for very different reasons: the NC has come to see the PAGD as detrimental to its traditional standing as the largest J&K party and the PDP, in a sense, reciprocates the feeling. In the process, both the parties have gone slow on the demand for restoration of the former state’s autonomy as the centre turns up heat.
