RS Pura village loses its ‘messiah’

Dinesh Manhotra

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Tribune News Service

Badyal Brahmana, January 7

A pall of gloom descended on this Brahmin-dominated village of RS Pura today as the news of the death of Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed broke.

Considered no less than a “messiah” by the residents, Mufti too was attached emotionally to the village as well as entire RS Pura, a belt battered by cross-border shelling.

Mufti’s clout could be gauged from the fact that he was the only J&K politician since 1947 who, despite belonging to the Kashmir region, won as an MLA from Jammu belt’s RS Pura seat in 1985. Gian Singh, an octogenarian farmer, recalls how Mufti had campaigned aggressively in the entire border belt of RS Pura. “Our village voted overwhelmingly in Mufti Sayeed’s support. I was his polling agent,” says Singh, pointing towards the ground where Mufti had addressed his first public meeting post-victory.

Parshotam Dass, another villager, says it was Mufti’s generosity that he always remained indebted to the residents of RS Pura, particularly Badyal Brahmana village, for electing him a legislator, a win that provided the much-needed fillip to his political career.

Two years before (1983) the win, Mufti had lost from his native place Bijbehara and Homeshalibugh in south Kashmir, which he contested on the Congress ticket.

Throughout his life, Mufti reciprocated the gesture shown by the residents of RS Pura in 1985, says Janak Raj. The PDP veteran had launched his election campaign for the last Assembly elections from RS Pura.

During a rally in Baspur on November 25 last year, Mufti had recalled: “I got political enlightenment in RS Pura in 1985. The region set an example of inter-regional unity... I won despite the vicious campaign against me in the 1983 Assembly elections in Kashmir.”